


The Platonic Bullshit Chart

by WeDidItKiddo



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 02:36:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16484444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeDidItKiddo/pseuds/WeDidItKiddo
Summary: A series of shots, a bet that involves a game of poker and Eric's ever shrinking patience with Les Platonics™ in the tour bus results in some interesting Halloween costumes.





	1. the Platonic Bullshit chart

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't supposed to be written between the unearthly hours of 1 and 6 am, but it did. Meaning: there could (and most likely will be) mistakes. Eeeep. This isn't my first RPF, but it's my first fic on this platform and in this fandom, so HIIIIII stranger on the internet! Glad you decided to check out this story! I hope this'll leave you with a smile on your face. 
> 
> (There's no way to make a smooth transition from that bit to this one, but I should probably also mention somewhere that I'm not a native English speaker. So bear (bare? ugh) that in mind as you're reading, and don't hesitate to correct any mistakes if you feel inclined to do so.)
> 
> With that out of the way, I hope you like this little splurge of my imagination! Hop in the comments (or in my Twitter notifications, WeDidItKiddo) and tell me your thoughts, or what you had for breakfast, or anything, really. Happy reading!

_The cast bus, Barrie_

_October 2018_

 

“Okay, it’s a deal. If you win, you get to pick our costumes for tomorrow's show. If not, we get to choose yours.”

Tessa had listened to Scott’s half-shouted words and the slam of his hand on the table in absolute horror. It was the night before Halloween, and the entire cast (minus Meagan, who was the first one to climb into her bunk and get tucked in by Chiddy) had gathered on the leather couches around the minuscule table of the cast bus. Shot glasses from a gift basket that was given to them after the evening show in Mississauga two days ago were scattered all over the living room area, as were the bottles of liquor that were part of the reason for Scott’s irrational enthusiasm and the steadily increasing tone of his voice.

Scott was always loud. But the combo “Scott + alcohol” was even louder, and the ideas that popped into his head got downright crazy after his fifth shot—as had this one.

“No freaking way.”

Tessa hadn’t realized she’d said the words out loud until Scott’s hand that was about to high-five with Andrew’s froze in mid-air, and the rest of the cast stopped their whooping and approving howls to glare at her.

“Oh, come on, Tess,” Kaitlyn jumped in as she nudged her ribs with her elbow. “This is going to be fun, I promise you.”

Tessa gritted her teeth uneasily. She was arguably the least intoxicated awake person in the bus, and therefore the most likely to spoil the fun for everyone else. Rationally, she knew they weren’t going to let her live this down if she refused to get in on the bet, but she really didn’t like the way her stomach clenched up at the idea of losing.

The thing is, Scott was bad at poker when he was sober. He wore his heart on his sleeve, like he had since he was a kid, and that personality trait only got more pronounced with alcohol running through his veins. Drunk (or tipsy, as he claimed) Scott was an absolutely useless poker player. Tessa wouldn’t want to change it for the world, but she also didn’t want to take the ice at the show tomorrow wearing God knows what ridiculous costume because Kaitlyn and Andrew had beat their asses in a 1 a.m. poker game.

Still, the atmosphere in the bus was largely in her disadvantage, because everyone was glaring at her with an unimpressed look on their faces.

 _God, I wish we could go back to playing Mario Kart_ , she thought to herself as she looked at the shot glass she’d forgotten about when Andrew and Scott had started working out the terms and conditions of the bet. Swallowing the words she really wanted to say, she put the glass to her lips, tilted her head back and slammed it back on the table when it was empty.

“Okay, what the hell, I’m in.”

“WOOOHOOOOOOOOO,” Scott yelped loudly from his spot across the table next to Andrew, jumping up and pumping one fist in the air. His cry was answered with an unmistakably irritated “Keep it the fuck down or I’m stashing the liquor under my mattress for the rest of the week!” coming from the bunks, but Meagan’s words did nothing to dampen Scott’s euphoric mood.

The pure joy on his face was almost worth it, Tessa thought as she shook her head at him, if it weren’t for the glassy look in his eyes and the knowledge that this game of poker wasn’t going to end in their advantage.

As Eric helped Kaitlyn shuffle the cards and Chiddy, Andrew and Scott crowded together on the couch, undoubtedly discussing costume options, Tessa’s gaze crossed Kaetlyn’s. She’d watched the entire ordeal with a smile on her face, and now she was shrugging her shoulders like she was saying, _well, you brought this upon yourself_.

And maybe she had. Maybe _they_ had. The chart that was stuck to the mini fridge was clear evidence of that, the chart Eric had officially labeled “Platonic Bullshit Chart” when the bus had taken off for its first show nearly two months ago. Chiddy and Eric were in charge of filling the paper, and they’d taken that task very seriously—which could be the reason why more than half of the page was already filled, despite the fact that they still had twelve more shows to go, not including tomorrow’s show.

Basically, their task consisted in keeping track of every interaction on the bus that couldn’t constitute as platonic and assigning a score to said action. The paper was divided into two columns, one with “WeaPo” written at the top and the other “VirtueMoir”, and the pair that had the highest score at the end of the tour had to buy drinks for the entire production crew, including the physio team.

Meaning everyone knew about the chart. It had become an ongoing joke among the crew, but especially the cast, and it was part of the reason why Kaitlyn and Kaetlyn were now sharing the queen size bed in the bus with the production staff.

Yes, you read that right. Despite what everyone (meaning their entire fanbase) thought after Meagan had shared some bus details in a radio interview, Tessa wasn’t sharing a bed with Scott. Initially, that had been The Plan, a plan Tessa had spent countless restless nights leading up to the tour thinking about, because she didn’t know how this was going to work.

On the flight back from Pyeongchang, the prospect of never taking the ice again with Scott had crept up on Tessa in the form of the most vivid dream she’d ever had. She’d woken up to Scott’s hand on her arm and his slightly worried gaze focused on her face, and she hadn’t even sat up before knocking down her headphones and blurting, “Let’s produce a tour together. To say thank you to Canada.”

Scott had initially looked a little surprised, but the suggestion had planted a seed in his brain that had blossomed in a couple seconds, and while neither of them had said it out loud, they both knew they didn’t want to stop skating with each other just yet.

And, rationally, Tessa knew she couldn’t have a better partner by her side to take on a project this big than Scott. They’d always balanced each other out, pretty much on every level; when he’d perked up with song suggestions, she’d immediately started envisioning costume ideas, and they’d made all of their ideas fit together like a perfect puzzle with the help of Sam and Marie and the rest of the team that was quickly assembled. But for some reason, the part that was the most difficult to tackle for Tessa had been the sleeping arrangements.

From the very beginning, it had become apparent that the entire cast couldn’t fit into one bus. There simply weren’t enough bunks, and although Scott had shot her a look that had knocked the air out of her lungs when they’d first checked out pictures of the bus, she’d never jumped up and suggested they’d share the bed in the production bus. Because regardless of the Bullshit Chart and the mocking of their cast mates, their relationship was, and had always been, strictly platonic.

 _Well, apart from that one Halloween kiss fifteen years ago_ , Tessa thought with a grimace as her mind inconveniently reminded her of the Canton party in Charlie’s apartment where Scott had experienced his very first round of shots. By the end of the night, Vodka had been replaced by undefined mixes of liquor and resulted in some unlucky pictures of Scott and Charlie in their costumes, and Tessa had taken it upon herself to make sure nothing else crazy happened to Scott.

They’d always looked out for each other. That night was no different.

They’d also been very careful not to cross any of the boundaries they’d set pretty early on in their partnership, especially when they entered their teens and Tessa had realized one morning how out of the ordinary it was that her intestines started floating when Scott told her an especially bad joke during practice, and she had spent the walk home from Charlie’s apartment reminding herself of those boundaries to keep her heart right where it was supposed to be when Scott had wrapped his arm around her shoulder and put most of his weight on her.

The kiss had happened the way almost everything between them happened: in the freezing cold under a spotlight, when their faces were so close they could feel each other’s breaths on their skin, the both of them dressed in a costume and pretending to be someone they really weren't.

The only difference that night was the fact that they weren’t standing in a freezing cold rink but on a snowy sidewalk in Michigan, and the light was radiating from the street lamp on the corner of Scott’s street instead of the bright rink lighting. And, more than on the ice, Tessa felt like she was the most real version of herself in the moment Scott’s glassy eyes had locked on hers and he’d stopped dead in his tracks.

She knew she wasn’t pretending when his cold lips had touched hers, his muttered “Thanks for walking me home, Tess” dissolving in white clouds the moment he leaned into her. And she’d almost let herself believe he wasn’t pretending either, despite the shots and the alcohol and the multiple girls he’d flirted with at the party. For three seconds, they were just Tessa and Scott, not the junior ice dancers who were making their mark in the ice dancing world like no junior team had ever done before.

Until the next morning, when Tessa was still replaying the memory of her very first kiss over and over in her head as she had walked into the dressing room and a hungover Scott had greeted her with a low grumble, smashing the back of his head against the wall a little harder than he had probably intended when leaning back.

He had no recollection of the previous night. Everything after the party was wiped from his memory, hence why Tessa hadn’t even shared her first kiss with her sister, let alone with the rest of the world on national TV fifteen years after it had happened. She didn’t want to Scott to feel any remorse or guilt, and it was really just less complicated to leave things as they were: on the ice, where their partnership and undeniable chemistry was taking the world by storm.

And still, that kiss had been the reason for every surge of butterflies that had surprised her in the years following the Halloween party in Canton, and it had been the reason why she’d been instantly flooded with gratefulness when Eric suggested they’d draw straws to see who got to share the bed in the production bus—complaining he “couldn’t stand the thought of either Kaitlyn and Andrew or Tessa and Scott sharing a bed and hearing them claim every day that nothing even remotely non-platonic happened in there”, because he wouldn't believe them anyway. The current situation, each of them sleeping on opposite ends of the cast bus, was a lot more beneficial for her sleeping pattern and over-imaginative brain than trying to navigate sleeping together with Scott in one bed could ever be.

Tessa didn’t realize her gaze had been stuck on Scott’s bunk for a suspicious amount of time until Andrew’s voice burst through the wall of memories her brain had put up, and she blinked to get a grip on the present again.

The present, which manifested itself in a game of poker laid out on the extendable table and the inevitable loss of a bet at the end of the night.

In contrast to the night in Canton fifteen years ago, Tessa wasn’t planning on staying sober for this. If she was going to go down in history as the person with the worst poker partner in history, she figured she might as well do it mildly numbed by vodka and laughing her way through it instead of spending tonight dreading the costumes for tomorrow night’s show. Because the one thing she knew for sure, other than the fact that Scott was going to be absolutely useless in her attempt to win this game, was that Andrew and Kaitlyn were going to screw them hard with their costume choice. They were ahead of Tessa and Scott on the Bullshit Chart by a few points, and they desperately needed something to even things out.

Well, after tomorrow, things were going to change in their advantage quite drastically. Tessa wasn’t aware exactly how drastic when she took the cards from Andrew and gestured to Kaetlyn to poor her another shot of some drink from the gift basket, but she wouldn’t discover that until the next evening in the tunnel of the ice rink.

“LET’S DO THIS, T!” Scott bellowed as his hand hit the table, and this time, Meagan’s head popped out of her bunk.

“Moir. Keep your _fucking_ voice down.”

“I will, Meg, I’m sorry.” Scott shot her his best sober smile, which was convincing enough to make her yank the curtain closed again, and grinned at the rest of the cast. “No worries, Virtch, we totally got this,” he added when he noticed Tessa downing her third shot of the last five minutes.

Spoiler alert: they didn’t.

____________________________

“If it weren’t for all the people who paid to see this show, our partnership would’ve ended yesterday,” Tessa grumbled under her breath the next day when everyone was lacing up their skates and getting ready to take the ice. The show was starting in ten minutes and through the gaps in the tunnel they’d noticed multiple people were dressed up for Halloween as they took their seats, which was usually the moment nerves started creeping up on Tessa. But tonight, those nerves weren’t caused by the steadily filling arena.

They were induced by Kaitlyn, whose smug smile hadn’t left her face since she and Andrew got back from town with her and Scott’s costumes after their last rehearsal and who was doing absolutely nothing to reassure her friend that everything was going to be fine.

Which, in combination with a slight hangover, had lead to Tessa’s current emotional state and anger towards Scott for losing a lousy game of poker. She was well-aware that this surprise costume wasn’t the end of the world, but she liked to be in control of things, and she currently didn’t feel like she had a grip on anything anymore. Her resolution to keep her organs from floating whenever Scott was around was already getting broken every morning when he slipped out of his bunk with messed up hair and sleepy eyes, and her attempts not to think of that snowy Halloween night in Canton had only resulted in an overflow of memories from the past. The only thing still under her control was the show, which had been taken away from her as well the minute everyone had stood up to give Andrew and Kaitlyn a congratulatory handshake the previous night.

She laced up her skates tighter than she normally would, and Kaetlyn just grinned at her grumpiness. “Tess, you know you don’t mean that. Nothing’s going to break up the two of you.”

She was right, but Tessa didn’t acknowledge that. She couldn’t. Mostly because Kaetlyn’s words didn’t sound like she was joking about her and Scott’s confusing relationship, unlike she had since Eric had started filling the Platonic Bullshit Chart.

Tessa straightened her back with a sigh and lightly tapped the wall with the back of her head. “Okay, whatever, it doesn’t even matter. It’s show time.”

“That’s the spirit.” Kaetlyn shot her one of her brightest smiles, and Tessa couldn’t help but smile back this time.

The show went as smoothly as they could hope for. The atmosphere in the arena felt a little different tonight, but Tessa wasn’t sure if that was because of Halloween or because she and Scott hadn’t been able to stop smiling at each other on (and off) the ice since they sang the national anthem—even when their Moulin Rouge routine forced them to get into character more than during any of the other performances.

She didn’t know what was going on. She only knew that the moment she had to show up in some costume selected by Andrew and Kaitlyn was getting closer, and when intermission rolled around, she needed a minute in the hallway just to get some air into her lungs.

“No matter what happens out there, no matter what your answer is, it won’t change anything.”

Her head snapped up and her green eyes found Scott’s hazel ones. Scott, who was still wearing his skates and skating guards… and who wasn’t making any sense.

For a second, Tessa thought he was referring to their moments on the ice, where they’d basically been eye-fucking in front of an audience that included kids and grandparents. She really didn’t want to think of it in those terms, but it had been proven to be easier not to fight the voice in her head. But then she cocked her head, because the strange look in his eyes told her he was talking about something completely different, and she was already opening her mouth to ask for an explanation when he surprised her by shooting forward to wrap his arms around her.

It was the most awkward hug they’d shared in years, and Tessa spent most of it cursing her organs for jumping up in her chest like they’d been fired by a slingshot. By the time she’d gained enough control of her arms to lift them up and return the hug, he was already pulling back.

“Nothing can mess this up, eh, T?” He poked her ribs, something he hadn’t done since they were kids. It was so out of the ordinary that she barely registered the nervous look on his face.

But she did, eventually, right before he took off and left her alone in the hallway. If anything, she was even more confused and tense than before the show had started.

____________________________

The mystery costume change came when Tessa had almost forgotten it was still happening.

Meagan and Elvis had just skated out of the tunnel for the intro of the dance battle when Kaitlyn got a hold of Tessa’s arm and pulled her mercilessly to the back of the changing corner. She and Andrew, who was nowhere to be seen, as Tessa realized when she almost tripped on her skates because of Kaitlyn’s forceful intervention, had just finished their routine to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and were supposed to change into their costumes for the dance battle. This was the moment when it got chaotic in the quick changing area, with limbs flying and sequins everywhere, but Kaitlyn seemed to be even more in a rush than normal.

When Tessa spotted the white gown she pulled out of the clothing rack, she instantly knew why.

“A _wedding_ gown? Kaitlyn, are you kidding me?!”

“Put this on, it’s a size too big so it will fit pretty easily,” Kaitlyn instructed her, wasting no time trying to justify her choice of Halloween outfit. Well, she didn’t really have to: it was pretty fucking clear why she and Andrew had chosen this particular dress.

If anything was going to earn her and Scott a skyrocketing score on the Platonic Bullshit chart, this definitely was.

“Do you know what everyone’s going to think? Do you realize how this is going to look?” Tessa’s words came out faster than usual, because she was entering a state of panic that wasn’t just caused by the impossibly fast costume change. Kaitlyn had already almost changed into her own, and the sound coming from the arena made it clear they didn’t have much time left.

She didn’t have any choice but to pull the wedding gown over her head. After frantically flapping her arms when she felt like she was drowning in white fabric and getting some help from Kaetlyn, she managed to get it on, and a mere ten seconds before they had to go out, Andrew popped his head through the curtain that separated the girls’ changing area from the boys’.

“K, veil,” he reminded her before disappearing again as quickly as he'd shown up.

“Riiiiight! I wouldn’t forget about you.” Kaitlyn snatched something from the bottom of the clothing rack and arranged it on top of Tessa’s head, who was completely powerless against the reality of losing the bet.

_This couldn’t possibly get any worse._

The arena behind them was exploding. Elvis’ voice rang through the air, and time was up.

When the three of them made their way out of the tunnel to the tunes of Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman”, the stunned gasps and surprised laughter were impossible to ignore. It took everything in Tessa not to look out into the crowd and see the looks on people’s faces, because she desperately wanted to know what they thought. Did they think this was the beginning of some sort of announcement, like they had at every opportunity since their golden moment in Korea eight months ago? Did they acknowledge that this was just a joke for Halloween?

She would never know, because _the show must go on_ and skating was more important than incorrect relationship statuses. Still, she intensely had to remind herself of that when their number was over and Elvis announced the boys, and Scott came out of the tunnel in an immaculate wedding costume that included a dark jacket, a waistcoat, shirt, tie and handkerchief.

Tessa immediately knew he could never have been able to change into that outfit in the period between Kaitlyn and Andrew’s performance and the dance battle. Which meant he must’ve known about the costumes before she did, which also meant he probably knew when he surprised her in the hallway and said things that didn’t make sense, which meant…

What?

_What did all of this mean?_

For a second, her heart leaped at the thought he might propose right in front of the entire arena. It was the most blatantly obvious next step given the circumstances, but then her rational brain caught up with her and reminded her they were wearing _Halloween_ costumes, that he would be skipping about 1982973 steps if he did that, and that there had never been any indication that she wasn’t the only one out of the two of them who had gone down that mental road before tonight.

Besides, Kaitlyn and Andrew might have accepted the opportunity to mess with them with open arms, but they would never go this far.

… right?

Everything was unsure and yellow wasn’t yellow anymore when the boys’ first number ended and the girls’ next one started. Tessa was only vaguely aware of her own body throughout all of it, and she could only thank muscle memory for making it through the entire battle without fainting on the ice. Which was something she almost did when “Pony” came on and Scott lost his tie and jacket by lack of white shirts, but she would never admit that to anyone. Not even to the little girl in one of the on-ice seats who reached out to touch her white veil and gave her the most adorable grin when the boys snapped Patrick’s suspenders and waved him off the ice.

“Let’s hear it for the ladies!”

Elvis’ voice broke her trance and Tessa reluctantly got up with the other girls to join the guys and Elvis and Meagan in the middle of the ice. The audience roared, but Tessa could only hear a buzzing in her ears and her eyes didn’t leave Scott’s.

She could tell he was up to something. She just wasn’t sure if she wouldn’t rather just speed off the ice right this second so she wouldn’t have to deal with it in the first place.

“Let’s hear it for the boys!” Elvis said into the microphone when the clapping had subdued, and for the first time, Tessa allowed herself to look around the arena.

There weren’t very many faces she could see clearly because of the spotlight they were in, but she could _hear_ the reception of the boys’ number was slightly more superior, unlike the previous shows, and she could _feel_ the energy in the room. Everyone was waiting for something to happen, and that included her.

“Well, it seems like you couldn’t charm the audience tonight, ladies.” Elvis zoomed around Meagan and patted Scott on the chest. “I think the fantastic Halloween costumes might have had something to do with it.”

The audience gave a roaring applause in response, and the guys had obviously won. Meagan already held the microphone up when Scott suddenly snatched the one Elvis was holding out of his hands.

“Hold on, Elvis, I want to say something first.”

The buzzing in Tessa’s ears went dead quiet the second his voice rang through the arena. She knew the audience audibly gasped when his gaze shifted to her, because she could physically feel Kaetlyn gasp as well, and the look on Andrew’s face told her this was not part of the plan.

None of this could be blamed on the bet. This was all Scott.

“The girls might have lost tonight, but they haven’t the previous shows, and that’s because you don’t win very easily when you’re competing against this one.” He gestured to Tessa, whose face had morphed into what seemed to be a permanent look of horror.

_Shut it, Moir. Shut it. You’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do. Shut it._

Her mind kept repeating the words, but her body was giving her a different signal. Maybe she wanted him to do this. She’d always hated the thought of being proposed to in public, but she also hated the role of the hunter, and that’s how she had felt for the past few years because Scott was so much better at dating other people than she was—but that was the exact opposite of what was happening right now.

She wasn’t hunting anything or anyone. In that moment, when Scott’s grin reached his eyes and they pierced hers, she was the one who was being chased, she realized with a wild jolt of her heart.

Then, it started racing.

“The boys have won tonight, but I’m going to make a proposal,” Scott said. He was also addressing the audience now and Elvis, who was doing nothing to hide the confusion on his face.

At the word “proposal”, Tessa’s knees nearly gave in. The audience just roared.

“Noooo, not like that,” Scott reacted to the deafening screams coming from the northern side of the arena in particular. He let out a laugh because of their enthusiasm. “Hey, back to business, everyone. I’m not playing games.”

He probably shouldn’t have used the word “business”, Tessa thought briefly as the on-ice row erupted in fits of laughter, but she was suddenly too nervous to share in the hilarity. Because Scott had stopped almost right in front of her.

“What do you say,” he started, and, after pausing a second to gaze in Tessa’s eyes, continued, “we let the ladies win this one.”

He was obviously still talking to the audience, but he was close enough now to Tessa for her to hear his voice without the microphone, and it was sending chills down her back.

“On the sole condition,” he added sternly, and by doing so shushing the yells from the audience, “that Tessa Virtue will agree to go out on a date with me.”

Tessa had a head start of about a fraction of a second on the audience since she didn’t hear his voice through the speakers only, but it still took longer than that for the words to register. When the eruption of screams started around them, she blinked numbly at him.

“What?”

The microphone was so close that her voice sounded through the entire arena, effectively bringing down the noise again as everyone waited for her answer in anticipation.

But she couldn’t even wrap her head around what had just happened, because it wasn’t what she’d expected. And in some inexplicable way, she was weirdly disappointed.

Scott interpreted the look on her face as confusion. He gave her another look before grabbing the microphone a little tighter. “If you agree to go out with me, we’ll let you have this win tonight and you ladies can continue your winning streak. If not… well, this will go down in history as the first game Tessa Virtue has ever lost.”

The switch in Tessa’s head flipped the moment the words came out of his mouth. It was his voice that made her switch back into performing mode, not his face. The voice of Scott Moir that was audible throughout the arena was putting on a show, and the face of Scott Moir who was standing right in front of her reminded her more of the sixteen-year-old drunk kid she’d taken home after a Halloween party than anything else. If she had let her decision be determined by the latter, the answer she gave him would’ve been different.

“Not in a million years, Moir.” She’d taken the mic from him and was back to playing dress-up on Halloween, messing with the audience like they’d involuntarily done since the 2010 Olympic games. Maybe even before that, who knew at this point. “I’ll take a loss over that anytime.”

People booed, girls whistled, and parents laughed at the scene unfolding in front of them. Tessa could only press her lips together and return Scott’s gaze twice as intensely, but she couldn’t ignore the flash of hurt that crossed his face for a split second after she said it.

Then he was back to being Scott.

“Auch, that hurt!” He turned to Andrew for support and leaned over with the mic still in his hands, tilting it towards his mouth. “Hey, Meagan, I have to ask… doesn’t that just make you want to… dance?”

And just like that, the show went on, and it was like the what-could’ve-been-a-proposal-but-really-wasn't never even happened.

____________________________

Not to Tessa.

She tried her best, but she couldn’t ignore Scott’s actions during the show. She knew he asked that question for a reason—he asked her out, for god’s sake! In front of a few thousand people!—and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed.

Their post-show ritual was still the same, in the sense that the girls had claimed the bathroom first and were in their bunks before the boys and before the bus had even taken off, but Tessa, who usually joined in on the enthusiastic chattering, hadn’t said much at all since they’d left the ice. Neither had Scott. Kaetlyn had noticed but done nothing more than give her a questioning look, and Tessa had dismissed it with a smile and a shrug.

She couldn’t just dismiss her feelings with a smile and a shrug. They were all over the place and tormenting her with multiple vicious attacks of butterflies as she squeezed her eyes shut. They were also what ultimately lead her to be the last person awake on the bus, long after Andrew, Chiddy and Scott’s voices had trailed off.

Part of her kept overthinking the moment she’d realized he might be proposing on the ice. In hindsight, that possibility had probably never even been a possibility to begin with, but it had been very real when Kaitlyn shoved that white gown in her hands and demanded her to go out on the ice with Scott dressed as two newlyweds.

And as badly as she wanted to shut up the voice in her head and tuck that part of her brain back into the box she’d neatly kept close pretty much her entire life, she knew she would’ve said yes.

As crazy as it was after spending twenty-one years with him without even sharing as much as a sober kiss off the ice, and as cazy as it would have been agree to marry him after having been on exactly zero dates and having had exactly zero conversations about their feelings for each other, she knew she would’ve said yes.

Because she couldn’t imagine herself saying no.

That thought made Tessa freeze with her hand up in the air where it was touching the ceiling of her bunk. Her breath faltered, but her mind was the calmest it had been in months.

Because finally, she was allowing herself to put the words together in her head.

_I would have said yes._

The smile on her face wasn’t fake when she lowered her arm and tucked it under the covers, slightly rocking because of the driving bus. Twenty years of having Scott by her side and relying on him washed over her like a tidal wave, and the immense realization wasn’t so immense anymore when she thought how this was really the only possible outcome for the both of them. The rest of the world, both of their families and pretty much all of their friends had realized it much sooner than she had, because they’d created this airtight bubble for just the two of them, but Tessa knew that she was right. She didn’t want to spend her life with anyone other than the boy who’d started holding her hand when she was only seven years old.

Ultimately, she stayed there listening to the sound of the bus engine for half an hour longer before she made the move to open up the curtains. Even then, she checked to make sure everyone was asleep before she put one leg down the side of her bunk, and then the other.

All of their castmates had their curtains shut all the way, expect for Chiddy. He was in the bunk across Scott’s, and if she hadn’t known that he and Scott once slept through a fire alarm years ago, she probably wouldn’t have stopped to grin at the look on his face.

Patrick’s entire body looked twelve years old again when he was asleep. His arms were usually tucked to his sides, and his mouth was open on his pillow, drooling slightly.

Feeling a gush of chills come over her at the sight of her life-long friend, Tessa shuddered slightly in her pajamas and turned to look at the other bunk. Scott’s bunk. Her belly was buzzing with nervous butterflies, and she briefly reconsidered aborting the plan altogether (because  _hello_ , they still had twelve more shows to go), but then she remembered how what she was about to do had been The Plan to begin with and almost snorted out loud.

Holding her breath and storing away any plans that involved marrying here skating partner for now, she pulled back the curtain and ducked to step into his bunk.

He was awake. She knew it before she even felt him, because she heard the rustling of sheets and the surprised sound at the back of his throat when she crawled into his bunk and put her hand on his leg over the covers.

“Tess? What on earth are you doing?”

“Turn that off,” she whispered back, covering her eyes with her hands. Scott had switched on his phone’s flashlight and was blinding her with it, but he didn’t respond to her urgently hissed words in any way. “Do you want Chiddy to notice?”

That did it. The light switched off, and Tessa quickly pulled the curtain shut behind her. She crawled closer to Scott’s body with her hand still on his leg to guide her, but she soon realized that might come across in a different way than she intended and let her hand fall in her lap.

“T?” His voice had turned slightly worried. He pushed up on his elbows to steady himself and then sat up completely, reducing the space between them to just a few inches. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“How about that date?” she said. There were still stars dancing over her retinas from his phone light, but she could make out his facial features, and she saw him struggling to come up with a response.

“What?” he echoed her words from earlier, only this time it was just the two of them in his bunk. No lights, no costumes, just them.

“How about that date?” Tessa whispered again, not because she really thought he hadn’t heard her, but because she wanted him to figure it out on his own.

Realization was starting to dawn on him. She could see it in his eyes, and she could feel it in the way he breathed out.

“I only have one condition.” She looked at his lips, just because she could in the security of his dark bunk, and because he wasn’t giving her any reasons why she shouldn’t. “You don’t get to drink any shots. I want you to remember when you kiss me again.”

“Again?”

She pressed her lips to his in response, and it was better than any other answer she could’ve given him. Maybe someday she would tell him about the Halloween party and that the singles skater he had despised in Waterloo wasn’t the first boy she’d ever kissed, despite what she’d told him that morning before practice, but she had time for that. Heaps of it. She felt it in the way he kissed her back, carefully at first and then losing a little bit of control as he traced her lips with his tongue before meeting hers in the middle.

“You know this will send our Platonic Bullshit score through the roof if it hasn’t already after tonight’s show, right?” he said when they’d both come up for air, but never breaking the connection of their foreheads. “Eric is going to lose it.”

“Why should they know about this?” She pulled back slightly to wiggle her eyebrows at him, feeling giddier than she was probably supposed to at the prospect of sneaking around with Scott in a tour bus that was likely the size of her kitchen. They literally had no place to hide.

But the same enthusiasm was blossoming on Scott’s face as well. “Oh, really? You want to play it that way?”

“Maybe.” She smashed her nose against his and took his chin in her hands, her grin matching the one on his face. “Or maybe I feel like I’ve already won this game anyway.”


	2. that's why friends should sleep in another bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wakes up in his bed. The tour bus leaves without them or the box of Pony shirts. And Tessa Virtue's strawberry shampoo might just be Scott's undoing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I changed the chapter number to "?", because I clearly don't have a clue where this fic is taking me. Yesterday this was going to be a one-shot, today a DM on Instagram and some M&G stories inspired another chapter. (I can't promise you any future updates will be this frequent, though.)
> 
> You'll probably notice the Real Life Timeline gets a little messed up in this one. I had to, it was too fun not to write about strawberry shampoo and worried Scott.
> 
> (Chapter title from the Ed Sheeran song "Friends", if you're looking for another song that was written for VM. I might be changing the title of this fic as well in the near future, not sure yet.) 
> 
> Don't hesitate to share your thoughts at the end!

_Scott’s bunk, Oshawa_

_The day after Halloween_

 

Tessa hadn’t had many off days since the tour premiered in Abbotsford. She didn’t have many off days in general, a gift a lot of members in both the Virtue and Moir family possessed, but the morning after Halloween, one of first words that exploded in her head after groggily blinking her eyes up at the ceiling was a loud, exasperated and overly stretched “ _FUUUUUUUUCKKK_ ”.

Next to her, smashed against the side of the bus due to the lack of space, Scott stirred and slurred the words “whazzgoinon” before his head popped up from his pillow. Clearly, the words in Tessa’s head had reached her vocal chords without her permission and woken him up.

She immediately shot forward to press her hand against his mouth, despite just having woken up and feeling like she’d been asleep for exactly twenty minutes. Scott’s eyes went from groggily confused to absolutely terrified in a two-second time span when he realized the reality of the current situation.

The reality being the fact that Tessa had never left his bunk after their kiss last night, and that they’d woken up next to each other when all of their cast mates were no more than five feet away from them and ten minutes from waking up as well.

This had never been the plan. To be fair, nothing that involved kissing her best friend and skating partner of twenty-one years had been the plan before yesterday, but then the wedding costume thing happened and Tessa suddenly wasn’t sure of any of her major life decisions anymore. She was currently focused on the one thing she was certain of, and that was the fact that she had to get out of here before someone would notice.

“This is a tricky situation, T,” Scott muttered against her hand, which was a pretty defined description of reality.

Her knee was pressed up against his leg, and everything was so warm and comfortable and overwhelmingly perfect in this tiny space that she was having trouble focusing on figuring out her escape plan.

Because yes, she had to get out of here, but she’d woken up next to _Scott Moir_. For the first time in _years_ (the last time being that one competition where the hotel had completely messed up their rooms and Scott had ended up on the floor at the end of her bed). Their total kiss count was up to more than Tessa had kept track off (she’d stopped counting when he’d roughly pulled her into his lap and her head had hit the ceiling, making the both of them erupt in silent laughter) and her heart had taken up permanent residence somewhere six feet above her body, but she’d never planned on falling asleep in his arms.

The memory of his fingers tracing circles on her bare shoulders the night before made her shiver when she moved her hand from his mouth, lingering on his lips. Nothing that requested taking off their pajamas had happened the previous night, but it might as well have, if the fire currently raging through her lower abdomen was any indication. She vaguely remembered him tucking her to his chest when she had mentioned how tired she was, and what started as syncing their breathing had (quite obviously) resulted in them spending the entire night together in Scott’s tiny bunk.

 _We might as well just fill the entire chart now and flee the country before the tour has even ended_ , Tessa thought as the image of Eric and the rest of the cast finding the two of them in bed together filled her mind.

Back in action mode, she started unwrapping herself from the sheets and Scott’s left leg, which was draped over her right one. The loss of physical contact was almost painful, but she didn’t let her feelings take control of her actions (or otherwise last night wouldn’t have ended with nothing more than a kiss).

“I have to get back to my bunk _now_ , before someone notices.”

“Hold on.” Scott sat up and leaned forward to stick his head out of the curtain, pausing for a moment before he pulled back. “I think we better w—”

“Scott’s not awake yet?” Eric’s voice drowned out Scott’s words and made Tessa freeze in her spot on top of the covers. Her eyes were burning into the curtain like she would be able to see through it if she just focused hard enough, until she blinked and fixed her gaze on Scott.

“ _We are so screwed_ ,” she mouthed soundlessly.

There was a soft thud when Eric’s feet hit the floor of the bus (his bunk was on top of the driver’s, Josh) and then Meagan’s voice sounded from the bed above Chiddy’s.

“No, they're all still sleeping. He probably needs an extra hour of sleep to recover from yesterday’s rejection.”

Eric let out a huff, and in the confined space of the bunk, Scott’s lips curled into a smirk. “Probably. I admire him for trying, though. In a full arena, of all places. You’ve got to give him credit for that, even if he didn’t gain anything from it.”

 _Oh, really?_ Scott’s eyebrows seemed to be saying when they danced over his forehead. Tessa couldn’t help but silently slap his knee.

“Oh well, whatever,” Eric said, this time sounding a lot closer. “I’m never going to understand those two. D’you mind if I hop in the shower first?”

“No, of course, I’ll get the coffee going.”

Footsteps sounded on the fake wooden floor as Eric made his way to the bathroom and Meagan slipped out of her bunk to start the coffee machine, and Tessa held her breath when she halted in the space between their beds. After some rustling, Meagan’s footsteps retreated to the kitchen area.

“What do we do now?” She turned to Scott, who still seemed to be listening intently to any other noises in the bus. When it was clear that Meagan and Eric were the only two people awake, his eyes returned to hers.

“I think I have an idea, but I don’t know if it’ll work.”

“What’s your idea?” At this point, she was expecting just about anything…

… _except_ for Scott to crawl around her and pat her knee before opening up the curtain and stepping outside.

“Morning!” he said a little too loudly but completely in character after closing up the curtain enough for Tessa to stay hidden. She sat completely frozen against the wall, listening to him make small-talk with Meagan in the kitchen and waking up both Andrew and Chiddy less than five minutes later, when a cup came crashing down the kitchen cabinet and shattered on the floor.

“Dude, not funny,” Chiddy growled, his words muffled because he was probably squashing his face in his pillow. Tessa was too scared to move to check.

“You're the _worst_ , Moir,” Andrew added to Chiddy’s complaint, sounding equally as irritated for having woken up before his alarm.

Tessa heard him twisting and turning above her and then, a fraction of a second after his curtain zipped open, she was suddenly staggering backwards when his legs swung into the curtain of Scott’s bunk and nearly hit her in the face. Having just avoided a nearly fatal collision with her nose, she breathed heavily into the palm of her hand, bracing herself in the corner.

“Tess not up yet?” Andrew’s footsteps led to the back of the bus. “Wow, I can’t believe she slept through that racket. That girl’s got super powers.”

“I think she’s not feeling too well,” Scott said from the kitchen, his voice tinted with suppressed urgency. What Tessa couldn’t see was that Andrew had almost grabbed her curtain to check on her, and that Scott’s words made him backtrack right before he discovered her bunk was empty.

“Really?”

“Yeah, she told me after the show yesterday she was feeling a little off. Better let her sleep in today.”

In the pleasantly busy hustle of people getting up and moving through the bus, Tessa could unmistakably distinguish Andrew’s grin. Clearly, Scott had too, because he added in a threateningly low voice, “And that’s _not_ going on the chart. Nothing non-platonic about looking out for a friend who’s not feeling well.”

“Sure, buddy,” Andrew replied light-heartedly.

 _If only he’d see my bunk,_ Tessa thought, a shiver running through her. He would’ve discovered the truth that would, indeed, send Eric and probably everyone else into a frenzy.

But the truth wasn’t discovered, and she was bored out of her mind by the time everyone had showered and gotten dressed because Scott didn't keep five books in his bunk like she did (he only had the one she'd finished reading on the second night of the tour). They were in Oshawa today, marking the second consecutive show after they’d already had two series of five shows back-to-back, and she wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. Preferably with Scott by her side, she thought, surprising herself with her honesty, because tonight had been an absolute first and nothing she was used to. She just knew she didn’t want to _stop_ getting used to it.

Once again, her mind was ten steps ahead of reality, but Tessa let her mind wander freely in the time it took for the rest of the cast to get ready. By the time the door of the bus slammed shut, she was so consumed by her own thoughts that she jumped up at the sound.

“Coast is clear,” Scott said, moments before he ripped open the curtain.

She was startled a second time by his voice. He didn’t give her any time to recover, though, because before she could open her mouth, he was already heading out of the bus with his skating bag slung over his shoulder, leaving Tessa on her own in the now uncomfortably quiet bus.

She could’ve sworn she smelled the strawberry scent of her shampoo where Scott had been seconds before.

____________________________

Tessa was, unlike Scott, a strong believer in faith and karma. Over the last couple of years, her superstitious beliefs had loosened up quite a bit, but they were back stronger than ever when she skated off the ice after the final number of the show that night and felt like she was in a literal tunnel of swirling colors, shapes and noises.

“T, are you okay?”

Scott’s worried voice made her slow down and look up for the tenth time that night. Every time he’d asked her that question, on the ice and between numbers, her answer had become less convincing and her intention to brush this off as a fluke had become harder to keep intact.

What had started out as an excuse to get out of a precarious situation on the tour bus that morning had now become reality: she felt like she was going to throw up any second and her head was spinning so badly that she couldn’t even smile at Scott.

“Not really,” she uttered before slapping on her skating guards and clumping down the hallway in search of a toilet. Or anything she could throw up in, really.

She made it to the bathroom just in time, and she’d just flung herself inside a toilet stall when someone’s shadow towered over her. Scott crouched down beside her in the tiny stall, reaching out to feel her forehead.

“You’re burning up.”

“Get out of here,” Tessa whispered, throat burning from the vomit. “You don’t have to see this.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’ll try to make it back for the Meet & Greet,” she pressed on, because she really didn’t want him to see this. They’d both seen each other at their absolute worst, but she didn’t want this sickness (or whatever it was) to ruin the night for the both of them.

Oh, god. All those people who would be waiting for them. All those kids and parents and grandparents who'd spent money on Meet & Greet tickets and were looking forward to meeting them, not just Scott but the _both_ of them together, and she didn’t even know if she was going to be able to smile for a picture…

“You’re not doing the Meet & Greet like this.”

It was like he could read her mind, and after twenty-one years, she was almost convinced he could sometimes. She looked up and saw his worried frown, more pronounced than she was expecting.

The look on his face softened when their eyes met. “T, you look like crap. I’m not letting you meet fans when you’re like this.”

The part of Tessa that wasn’t focused on making the room stay still instead of spinning around realized this was the moment when she was supposed to object and insist on doing the Meet & Greet. Instead, she turned back to the toilet with a sigh, privately grateful that he was the one deciding for her this time.

His hands touched her back, bringing instant relief. Not because his soothing strokes made the room stop spinning or helped clear up the nausea, but because despite the state she was in, he still managed to make her feel every spark of electricity wherever there was an inch of contact between them.

_I don’t want you to go._

“Are you going to be alright?”

His soft voice sounded right next to her ear. He was hunched over her, his eyes focused on her face so intensely she would’ve taken a step back if she wasn't tethered to the toilet bowl.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine here. Go, go make people happy. I’ll see you after.”

He was clearly reluctant to get up, but he nodded and rubbed her back one last time. “I’ll come back to give you your phone and maybe some medicine, if I can find anything. You let me know when things get worse, okay?"

Tessa nodded weakly, but decided to add "I will" before she'd worry him too much to leave her alone in the bathroom.

"I’ll miss you out there, Virtch,” he added quietly before he turned around to get ready for the Meet & Greet, because there was no one in the bathroom to hear his words.

“I already do,” Tessa whispered back as the bathroom door shut behind him.

____________________________

The Meet & Greet had never taken as long as the night in Oshawa.

Tessa knew that was probably just the needy voice in her head talking, but it seemed to take hours before the handle of the bathroom door went down again and Scott walked in. She’d taken off her skates and was now sitting on the toilet, her feet resting on the sides of her skates and her phone in her hands. She was only still wearing the white-and-blue hockey jersey they'd received before the show, her sparkling body suit left on the floor beside her. She looked up when the door opened, revealing Scott in a Thank You Canada Tour jacket and a dark shirt they’d gotten from one of their sponsors.

“Hey, how are you holding up?” He crouched down in front of her so fast he was almost a blur for a second. But he was the only thing in Tessa’s focus when he grabbed her bare knees and the warmth of his hands seeped into her.

“I’m feeling a little better.” She wasn’t lying, but her voice was raw, and he didn’t quite seem to believe her. None of the texts she’d sent him throughout the Meet & Greet had calmed his nerves either, because in the course of two hours they’d exchanged more text messages than they had in the last twenty-one years. (Scott wasn’t big on texting. He preferred face-to-face conversations, always had.)

“I mean it,” she added when she saw his eyebrow shooting up. Impulsively, she reached out to force it back down, but her hand lingered when he melted under her touch.

 _Literally_ melted. His shoulders sagged and some of the worried lines on his forehead faded as he leaned into her hand. “Everyone missed you like crazy.”

“Oh god, please don’t make me feel any guiltier about this than I already do,” she laughed, lightly squeezing his cheek.

He sat up with a radiant smile. “Of course not. I was probably not even the most worried person in the room, everyone completely understood and asked me to tell you to feel better.”

In spite of the convincing tone of his voice, Tessa was pretty sure he _had_ been the most worried person in that room, if his text messages were anything to go by. But she just smiled and didn’t say anything when he sat up again.

“Are you good to walk? Can I get you out of this dank bathroom? Chiddy was worried the buses were going to leave.”

“I think so.” She was suddenly very jealous of his footwear, because the thought of walking back to the girls’ dressing room in her skates made her want to stay in the bathroom rather than get on the bus in time.

Of course, like it was second nature (… which it pretty much was at this point in their partnership), Scott noticed.

“I’ll get your clothes first. Be right back.”

He left in a light breeze, but his return two minutes later was accompanied by some inward muttering Tessa couldn’t really make sense of. She was surprised by the dark cloud hanging over his head when he reappeared in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

“Chiddy wasn’t kidding,” Scott grumbled. “I couldn’t find your clothes, because the dressing rooms are empty. They must’ve loaded the buses already.”

Discomfort sunk down Tessa’s stomach when the meaning of his words dawned on her. She was going to have to make her way out of the arena in her Diamonds costume and skates, which, added to the fact that there was no way people weren’t going to spot them, made her feel like she was in a worse state than her two-year-old skates were.

“I was able to find some Jolly Ranchers, though.”

He was holding up the pieces of candy like they were some sort of consolation prize, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculously sweet gesture. “Okay, let’s get out of here before we’re stranded in a rink in Oshawa,” she said, patting his head and reaching for her Diamonds costume.

Once she was fully dressed again (although Scott had commented during their very first costume fitting with Mathieu that it looked like they were just wearing "pretty sparkles and nothing else"), she put her skates back on but didn’t even bother lacing them up. Tucking the laces into her boots, she took one of the Jolly Ranchers from Scott and popped it in her mouth—just in case they ran into someone on the way to the parking lot where the bus was waiting and she'd have to say something.

They didn’t run into anyone, but what they did encounter was an unmistakably left box in the hallway that had _Dance battle – boys_ written on it in thick black marker. With the box in his hands, Scott lead her to the back area and onto the parking lot—

Which was completely deserted.

“Oh my god, he really wasn’t kidding,” Tessa gasped, her words forming white clouds in the freezing night air. She turned abruptly to Scott, who’d dropped the box on the asphalt the minute the door had shut behind them.

“The _audacity_ ,” he muttered, in such an utterly offended way that Tessa’s gasp turned into a snort of laughter.

The short-term burst of happiness made her forget about her upset stomach, but nothing could block out the cold. Fifteen seconds after the door of the arena had shut behind them, she was wrapping her arms around herself to stop the uncontrollable shivers running through her. “If we stay out here long enough, I’m sure we can just skate our way to the next venue. It’s definitely cold enough.”

“Here, take this.” Scott took off his jacket and handed it to her, and she accepted because she wanted to avoid getting any sicker than she already was. It took all of her willpower to wrap the jacket around her shoulders, though, because the sight of him shivering in just his shirt was almost unbearable.

“I’m calling Chiddy,” he said resolutely. “The little fucker is going to make that bus turn around and come back to get us. After all, _we_ are the reason they’re getting paid to twirl around on the ice every night and get drunk on liquor from gift baskets.”

Tessa knew he was exaggerating a little. They couldn’t exactly afford to get drunk every night; last night had been an exception after two months of touring.

While he called Patrick, Tessa bent down to peer into the box at his feet. Its content consisted of the spare white shirts the guys ripped open during the dance battle. Marie-France’s idea to let the boys do a soft version of a striptease to the song “Pony” had been brilliant, until they’d started working out the details and their calculations had led to the roughly estimated 200 shirts in total they would need for the entire tour (including a few spare ones). This box didn’t contain all of them since the majority stayed on the bus, but they were going to need these eventually.

So, if picking up the two people who’d created this tour from scratch wasn’t going to convince their driver, Josh, to turn around, they always had leverage.

“Chiddy, tell Josh to get his butt back over here,” Scott half-shouted into his phone when his friend and fellow cast mate picked up, not wasting any time on a greeting. “This ain’t funny, dude. Tess is sick and it’s freezing out here.”

There was some noise on the other end of the phone, most likely Chiddy telling him off for taking too much time, and Tessa decided that it was time for an intervention.

“Hey, besides, we’ve got the Pony shirts you left at the arena,” she said accusingly into the phone. “So you don’t get to tell us off for taking too much time to get back.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re all that sick, Tess,” she heard Chiddy replying before Scott pulled the phone back and turned away from her.

“I’m not going to repeat myself," he said with a low voice. "Turn around, or you’re sleeping outside when we get to Sarnia.”

Before he’d even shut off his phone again, the lights of the tour bus flashed around the corner and the bus came driving across the parking lot as if it had been waiting just around the corner all this time. And maybe it had, because Chiddy was laughing his head off when he got out of the passenger’s seat to greet them.

“HAH!” he yelled, pointing both of his pointer fingers at the two of them.

“You go inside and get warm, I’ll deal with this idiot,” Scott muttered in Tessa’s ear as he picked up the box with the shirts. His breath was warm, and so was Tessa for a second before she set off on her skates across the parking.

Meagan and Andrew were waiting for her in the doorway of the bus, grinning. “Don’t worry, I put your clothes on your bed,” Andrew said, hoisting her up with one arm and steadying her when she was about to tip over.

“Poje, get your hands off my girl.”

Scott’s voice surprised Tessa, even though his words didn’t. This was classic Scott; the way he seemed to be dead serious this time wasn’t.

Andrew seemed to be caught off guard a little too, because he immediately let go of Tessa once she was safely inside the bus and stuck his head outside. “Relax, she’s still yours.”

Where Tessa had been greeted with Meagan and Andrew’s grins in the doorway, she was faced with Eric’s familiar resting bitch face she had learned not to take personally twenty seconds later, when she made her way to the bunks in her skating costume and hockey jersey.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m a little better, just nauseous,” she said, heat creeping up her neck and cheeks. “Were you guys waiting around the corner or something?”

“Something like that.” He flashed her a smile—and boy, when Eric smiled at you, he made you feel like the brightest person in the universe. “There’s some hot chocolate waiting for you guys in the kitchen.”

“Uhm—I’ll take you up on that offer tomorrow.” She hated turning down his sweet gesture, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to take one sip without getting the urge to throw up again.

While she took off her skates and jersey, Eric returned to the kitchen. She wasn’t aware of what he was up to in there until a gush of cold air entered the trailer and Scott closed the door behind him and Chiddy.

“Don’t even think about it, Radford.”

Tessa looked up, only to find Eric standing in the middle of the kitchen with the Platonic Bullshit chart in his hands.

“Not tonight,” Scott said.

“You can’t deny there was some obvious non-platonic—”

“Tess is sick. This isn't a game.”

And Tessa didn’t think any hot drink could make her feel warmer inside than the look in Scott’s eyes did in that moment.

____________________________

_Leon’s Centre, Kingston_

_One week after Halloween (November 2018)_

 

“CHIDDY! SCOTT! ANDREW! COME OVER HERE FOR A SECOND, WE’VE GOT SOME SCORES TO DISCUSS!”

Eric’s voice rang through the rink seemingly out of nowhere, and everyone who was gathered at the other end of the ice snapped up their head to look at him. Kaitlyn, who’d been in the middle of explaining something to Meagan, literally stopped in the middle of a sentence to see what was going on, but no one even noticed, because this wasn’t something that usually happened.

Eric wasn’t the loud one in the group. Everyone knew Scott had claimed that title pretty much since he had screamed non-stop for thirty minutes when he was born, a story he liked to tell to anyone who was willing to listen.

“What’s going on?” Tessa muttered to Meagan as Scott, Andrew and Patrick shrugged their shoulders at each other and took off to the other end of the rink, where Eric was waving a piece of paper through the air. Clearly, neither of the boys knew what he was up to.

Tessa’s curiosity got the best of her and she lightly squeezed Kaitlyn’s arm to let her know she was going to check what was going on before skating across the ice to the tunnel.

“What’s up?” she asked when she stopped right next to Scott, her words sounding lighter than a breath of air.

Eric looked up from the piece of paper with raised eyebrows. “Jesus Christ, you two really are just one person, aren’t you?”

Cheeks turning scarlet and eyebrows shooting up her forehead, Tessa’s gaze shifted to the other guys. Right. She probably didn’t have any reason being here, since Eric had never called her name.

But Scott, being the overly happy morning person that he was, immediately snaked his arm around Tessa’s shoulders and directed his bright grin towards Eric, whose expression was turning grimmer by the second. “Get to the point, Radford. What’d you call us over for?”

Eric seemed to consider blowing out the major sigh he was holding in, but decided not to at the very last second and held himself back as he let out his breath slowly and deliberately. He held up the paper for them all to see, and a laugh escaped Tessa that echoed through the arena when she recognized the layout.

“I _just_ came back from my Twitter hiatus and you two are already in trouble,” Eric said seriously, despite the giggles from everyone else in their little circle. No one took the Bullshit chart as seriously as he did, and no one still believed anyone was ever going to pay the drinks at the end of the tour. But that didn’t stop Eric from keeping track of every platonic move between the two couples.

After last week’s Halloween show, Tessa and Scott had almost collected double the score of Kaitlyn and Andrew, placing them in a pretty gnarly position that was becoming impossible to recover from, but neither of them was bothered by it as much as they had been in the beginning. They had truthfully spent more time trying to hide their glances at each other and any form of physical contact on the bus than thinking about the chart.

A mission that was, to say the least, nearly impossible.

Scott had always showed his affection in a physical way, more so than Tessa. He kept brushing her arms when no one was watching, patting her back lower than acceptable in a platonic bus environment, and whispering in her ear. And Tessa was doing exactly nothing to stop him.

Because even though she didn’t use the same love language as him entirely, she wanted to return every touch and every word in the same, intense way, and was spending a lot of time reminding herself why she shouldn’t.

The three stolen kisses in three different bathrooms across Canada had held her over until now, when she couldn’t take back the arm that was wrapped around his waist even if she wanted to. They’d have to find a bathroom again sooner rather than later, or she could see herself sneaking into his bunk again.

“How much trouble are we talking about?” Scott asked, sliding restlessly on his skates. He was always restless—one of the things they _did_ have in common.

“A bottle of strawberry shampoo worth of trouble.” Eric lifted his phone to show them a tweet. “Some people who attended the Meet & Greet are saying you smell like fucking strawberries, Scott. And if I’m not mistaken, that’s the scent of Tessa’s shampoo. Are you sharing toiletries too now?”

 _Fuck_. Tessa’s grip on Scott’s waist tightened a little, terrified about what he was going to say. She’d already suspected he’d started doing something like this a few days ago, but she’d never asked him and instead bought an extra bottle of her shampoo two cities prior to Kingston.

But maybe she should have made sure after all.

“And what about it? If I did, it was an accident,” Scott said, fake offense in his voice. “My god, do these people dwell on every single detail?”

Eric looked less than impressed by his excuse. “Sharing shampoo still doesn’t constitute as platonic. Chiddy, how many points are we giving them for this?”

Tessa’s gaze stuck to Andrew’s, who was nothing but amused by the current discussion between Eric and Chiddy. Everything between Scott and Tessa that gained them a higher score was a just a reward for him and Kaitlyn, unlike it was for them.

“How about fifty?”

“ _What_?” Tessa let out when Chiddy’s words pulled her from her thoughts. “Come _on_ , last week K and Andrew went for a full-on kiss on the ice, with photographic evidence to prove it, and only got thirty. Are you kidding me right now?”

“Sharing shampoo implies sharing showers, Tess,” Chiddy said, sounding anything but apologetic as he shrugged. “Besides, actions on the ice are worth less points anyway. Fifty it is.”

Eric popped the cap off the black marker he seemed to carry around everywhere and added the score to Tessa and Scott’s side of the chart, which was now three inches longer than Kaitlyn and Andrew’s. The current score difference between them was even bigger than that.

“A three hundred point gap,” Scott said to her when they skated back to the other side of the rink, leaning his entire body toward her automatically. “It’s going to be tricky, but we should be able to come back from that.”

“What are you suggesting?” Tessa checked to make sure Kaitlyn and Andrew couldn’t hear them before she looked up at him. He was gazing thoughtfully at a spot somewhere in the distance, and even though they hadn’t bothered keeping track of their score on the chart since the night she had climbed into his bunk, his competitive side seemed to be taking over again.

“I’ll think of something,” he said, tugging on the collar of his long-sleeved practice gear. “But this war isn’t over yet. I’m not paying drinks for anyone other than my family, friends and the B2ten team on my wedding day.”

If Tessa was still slightly light-headed from his arm around her a few minutes ago, she now nearly slipped and fell square on her ass in the middle of the rink. Scott caught her right before she hit the ice, like he always had, and grinned down at her when he’d steadied her again.

“Be honest with me. Who’s the better catch, me or Poje?”

“Oh my god, Scott.” She pushed him hard in the chest, but he wouldn’t have any of it and pulled her with him by her wrist, ultimately reducing the distance between them to just a few inches. “You are, by a mile,” she said in the privacy of their proximity and the music that was playing in the rink.

“Only a mile, huh?”

She hit him again, a little harder this time, and he effortlessly turned his ducking to avoid her fists in a dance lift when they practically felt Eric glaring at them from across the rink. Unable to stop grinning at each other, they reduced Moulin Rouge to the most unprofessional rehearsal of their entire career. No one noticed anyway, when there weren’t any cameras to capture their out-of-character moments, and the only thing the rest of the cast heard when they came close enough was Scott singing the lyrics to her.

Only out of their earshot did she return the words _I love you_ to him. No sound, but all feeling.


	3. Tessa, Scott, Nail Polish, Cupcake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can things still move too fast when you've already spent twenty-one years together? Apparently, they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter inspired by that Instagram post of Moir's Skate Shop showing Scott's skates. (I'm changing the real order of the shows quite drastically here, but we're just going to roll with it.)
> 
> I wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone for reading!! I never expected this to turn into a story, but I guess it has? We'll see where it takes me next. First, a heartfelt conversation between Tessa and her mom, Scott and Tessa's everlasting discussion about her skates (aka, all of our concerns manifested into fic!Scott) and a Virtue-Moir family gathering with an interesting outcome.

_The Virtue house, London_

_November 2018_

 

“Did you ever believe we would end up together?”

The words left Tessa’s mouth when she was standing in the kitchen of her childhood home the night before the London show, handing her mom a spatula to empty what was left of the cupcake mixture into the paper cups on the baking tray in front of them. They brought an abrupt end to the façade of calm and collectiveness she’d put on all evening and her intention to slip this topic into the conversation in a casual way.

This was the opposite of casual. This was raising red flags kind of casual.

Kate’s hand with the spatula froze in mid-air for a second, surprised by her daughter’s blunt question. Tessa had surprised herself too, because after spending countless restless hours on the tour bus trying to figure out how she was going to bring this up to her mom, blurting it out in the midst of discussing different romcoms for their movie night with Jordan had never been one of the options.

_Real fucking breezy, T._

“Who, you and Scott?” Kate put the spatula in the bowl of cupcake mixture, which Tessa had no contribution in making (she’d learned from past mistakes). The question was unnecessary and they both knew it.

This wasn’t the first conversation about her and Scott’s partnership they’d ever had in this kitchen. By far. But the most serious conversations prior to this moment were the ones where both her and Scott’s parents had sat them down at the table to make sure they still wanted to pursue skating for another season. She’d never discussed anything that wasn’t skating or friendship related.

Because there had never been a reason to.

When she’d first put the words “Scott” and “crush” together in her early teens, her diary had been the only one who knew about it. When he’d kissed her on that Halloween night in Canton and it turned out he didn’t remember any of it, she’d started training harder and longer than anyone at the rink, including Scott, so she would go home exhausted and fall asleep instead of lying awake thinking about the memory of his cold lips on hers. Even when it felt like her heart gained a new crack every time Scott started seeing someone new in the years after Canton, she hadn’t told her mom or Jordan how she really felt when she saw him with another girl. She’d kept it to herself out of fear that admitting to her feelings would destroy everything they'd worked so hard for.

But that’s where their comeback had been different. There were no distractions, no other relationships on either side, even though they’d never made that an official rule when they decided to come back to competition and prepare for Pyeongchang. They were more solid and determined than ever, and it was just _them_.

Scott and Tessa.

And that bubble was still intact, even with their official retirement announcement looming closer every day. 

“Yeah," Tessa nodded vaguely. "Did you ever… think about it?”

Despite her wasted attempt to make it sound like a casual question, Kate saw right through her. She eyed Tessa cautiously for a second before using the spatula to fill the last few cups on the baking tray. “Are you asking if I ever thought you would become boyfriend and girlfriend?”

If only Tessa had an ounce of the collectiveness her mom did. It was usually something she possessed, but not now, not when fifteen years of messy emotions and suppressed feelings were blocking her throat, waiting to come out some way or another.

“Yeah, something like that.” She started messing with the stick of butter that was left on the counter, ultimately turning around and pulling open the fridge because she didn’t think she could maintain eye contact for this. “Did you ever… I mean, did you ever think that would happen?”

Having cleaned out the entire bowl, Kate opened up the preheated oven and carefully slid the baking tray with the cupcakes inside, breathing out slowly when she got up again. “Well, I didn’t right from the get-go. You and Scotty are such different people, even more so when you were kids, and you definitely had your arguments. But you never blamed each other or called the other names. Once you started figuring out the communication thing, you worked together so well in that partnership.”

Tessa snorted involuntarily at the memory of the eight months they’d barely talked to each other when they were seven and nine, holding the fridge open longer than necessary and briefly wondering if it would be weird if she just bolted out of the room right now. It was a story they’d told numerous times to the press over the years, but she still felt second-hand embarrassment for her seven-year-old self.

“You weren’t always on the same page,” Kate continued, starting to assemble all the bowls they’d used and pulling open the dishwasher, “but you used that to become a better listener and you learned to accept the other person for who they are. In a lot of relationships, that’s not the case. You lose pieces of yourself overtime, pieces you chip off to fit into the other person without even realizing it.”

 _Like you and dad_ , Tessa thought, but she didn’t say it. She didn’t need to.

She watched her mom load the dishes from her spot by the fridge until she remembered basic manners and jumped in to help her—even if she’d rather have this conversation from opposite ends of the room.

Taking the beaters of the hand mixer from her, Kate continued in an almost systematic voice. “If you and Scott were going to work together as a unit under such high pressure, you couldn’t lose any pieces along the way, because that would become your undoing. He needed you to lean on just as much you needed him. So in a sense, your relationship has always had a stronger foundation than any other relationship I know. And yes, it did cross my mind maybe a few times.”

Her last few words were added in a softer tone of voice, because they were now looking straight at each other without any dishes to distract them, and Tessa didn’t know what to say. Her mind was racing to process everything she’d said, but what made her heart pound was that very last sentence.

It wasn’t like she’d never considered the possibility that her mom would see something between the two of them. None of their siblings or friends had ever really understood the dynamic between them, and both the Virtue and Moir families had put them on the chopping block on more occasions than she could recall at this point. But joking remarks was all they had ever been, and in some twisted way, it was something they’d gotten used to over the years as their chemistry on the ice gained more attention from the rest of the world.

Now, when there were no uncles or cousins or reporters around to ask about their love life and it was just her and her mom in the kitchen of her childhood home, that last sentence felt more raw than it ever had.

“So do you think we would work? As a couple?” She was just trying to gain time at this point, because she didn’t want to get to the real reason why she’d brought this up in the first place: the fact that she and Scott had kissed for the first time in fifteen years. And that they had no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Kate wasn’t oblivious to her daughter’s restless fidgeting with the measuring spoons, though, and she leaned over to put the cups they’d used in the dishwasher before turning around and asking, gently, “Why are you asking me that?”

“I don’t know.” There was no place to hide under her mother’s gaze, but Tessa tried really hard to pretend there was when she resorted to staring at the measuring spoons like they were the most intriguing objects she’d ever seen. “I’ve just always wondered—”

“Did something happen between you two?”

The measuring spoons forgotten, she locked her gaze to Kate’s, who was still (annoyingly) the most collected person in the room. Tessa felt like she was on the edge of losing it completely. Her initial instinct was to deny everything and brush this off as a silly joke, but that turned into a toned-down version of the truth after she swallowed.

“Well, he asked me to go on a date with him in front of an entire arena, so I guess you could say _something_ happened.”

She didn’t mention climbing into his bunk or the kisses they’d shared all across Canada, because as badly as she wanted to tell her mom about that, she couldn’t. Telling her about the date alone felt like she’d just dismantled a bomb.

Where she was expecting Kate to widen her eyes in surprise, she was only answered with a soft smile in return. “I was already suspecting something like that.”

“Really?” Tessa’s breath escaped as the word did, deflating her completely.

“Uh-hum.” Kate tilted her head, brushing her light hair out of her face and studying her with a nostalgic twinkle in her eyes. “You probably don’t remember this, but I can still see you getting in the car after your very first skating practice. When I asked you if you had fun and if you made any new friends, you said there was this really funny, loud boy at the rink. You didn’t remember his name, but you couldn’t stop grinning, it was the most adorable thing.”

Tessa smiled instantly at her mother’s words, even though she had no recollection of that moment. She didn’t remember meeting Scott for the first time, and neither did he, but she did recall being very aware of the dark-haired boy who couldn’t stay still and was all over the place from the very beginning.

“So you saw this coming from day one, is what you’re saying?” she pushed.

“Oh, honey, no.” Kate put a hand on her arm, squeezing softly. “Every girl in the rink had a crush on Scott, you’ve said it yourself.”

 _Painfully true_ , Tessa thought, grimacing at the memory of the girls who had the courage to talk to him back then when she didn’t.

“But you weren’t just any girl, Tessa. You feel everything, every emotion twice, because you carefully take time to process things long after they happen. Even when you were little, you were always a little in your own head. So when I saw you couldn’t stop grinning after that first practice, and every practice that followed, I knew there was something there. It was the base of a lifelong friendship, but now… maybe it has grown into something new.”

Nibbling on her lower lip, Tessa smiled shyly when her mom wrapped her arms around her. She leaned into the hug, but her thoughts were distracting her from her mother’s comforting embrace.

“I’m just _scared_.”

Her words were muffled in her mom’s sweater, only for the two of them to hear, even though there was no one else in the house. She tightened her grip a little when she said them, because she was suddenly overwhelmed by fear.

Fear this relationship wasn’t going to work? Fear for the reaction of their friends and family when they found out? She didn’t even know. Probably both.

“I know you are, honey.” Kate rubbed up and down her back, like she’d done every time Tessa had come home for the weekend after a hard week in Waterloo or when she was beating herself up for a bad competition. “But it’s okay to feel this way. It’s okay to start feeling things you didn’t before, now that the pressure of competing is lifted from your shoulders and you get to explore this relationship in a new way. And you know what?”

“What?” Tessa pulled back to look at her and found the calm and reassurance she needed on her mother’s face.

“Most of this _isn’t_ new. You just have to remember that it’s still just you and Scott. Then it’s not that scary anymore, right?”

“Maybe,” she said with a half laugh, half cry, well-aware she was usually more well-spoken than this. “But you wouldn’t think it’s weird, seeing the two of us… dating?”

“Oh, honey.” Kate heaved an overly exhausted sigh that seemed to contain twenty-one years of emotional damage, picked up a dish towel from the counter and swatted it in her direction. “What you two have is basically a marriage within itself. We’ve been part of the extended Moir family since we drove you to practice when you were seven. I promise you, no one is going to think it’s weird.”

“But don’t you think—”

“You haven’t discussed this further with Scott, have you?” she talked over her, observing her daughter’s face.

Tessa wanted nothing more than to escape her stare, but she knew she couldn’t. “No, we haven’t. The tour is keeping us pretty busy.”

 _… and so is sneaking around in a confined space with five other people_ , she added silently.

“You should.” Kate shot her a smile and turned to check on the cupcakes. “Try to find a moment for the two of you where you can talk this out. You’ll feel a lot better once you know where you stand with him.”

“Uh-hum.” Tessa was in her own head again, which was spinning with relief and anxiety. Relief, because her mom had reacted so calmly to the news that for the first time in their partnership, she and Scott might be heading in a direction that crossed the friendship line quite dramatically. Anxiety, because she knew they needed to have The Talk now.

And it had to be soon. Sneaking off to ice rink bathrooms and dark bunks to kiss was nice and all, but they couldn’t keep ignoring the big ass elephant in the room that was their non-platonic relationship. Something had changed, and Tessa didn’t need their marriage counselor to tell her that they needed to figure out what they were going to do moving forward.

She just needed to find her chill first. Preferably _before_ he was coming to pick her up in ten minutes to get their skates sharpened for tomorrow’s show.

____________________________

Fifteen minutes later when Scott’s truck pulled into the driveway, no chill was found, nothing was fine and the universe seemed to be flipping her off when the lid of the Tupperware box that contained a batch of cupcakes came flying off as she got in the passenger seat. Scott narrowly avoided a cupcake disaster by catching the box before it tipped over, his reflexes surprising Tessa even though he’d spent a lifetime making sure she never hit the ground.

“Hi,” she said more flatly than she’d intended, cursing herself for her clumsiness off the ice. It was something most people were surprised by once they got to know her, but for Scott it was second nature to prepare for disaster when she was around. “Sorry about that. We made cupcakes, my mom thought you would like to share some with your family.”

His face was guarded as he tested the mood she was radiating onto him, one of his eyebrows raised skeptically at the “we” part of that sentence.

And Tessa knew she couldn't fool him. “Okay, fine, _she_ made them,” she growled, “I was in charge of handing her the ingredients. Which I actually managed to do without causing a flour explosion in the kitchen, thank you very much.”

His grin turned to the Tupperware box. “Sounds like you're making progress, eh, Virtch?”

She could tell he was trying to lighten the mood, but the last thing she needed right now was a reminder of that time she’d attempted to make chocolate chip cookies for a group of their training buddies in Canton and ended up sending Scott to the store for snacks because she was too busy trying to get the smoke out of her apartment. Up until four years ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to throw that right in her face.

He didn’t right now. He just smiled at her, showing the wrinkles around his eyes that only appeared when he was genuinely happy or content. “Tell your mom we all said thanks. They look delicious.”

As he reached back to put the box of cupcakes on the backseat, his black Moir’s Skate Shop hoodie riding up in the process, Tessa was so distracted by the part of his abdomen that was showing that she was still staring when he was already facing her again.

“You alright there, T?”

Lifting her gaze to meet his, she considered for just a second following their counsellor’s advice to be straightforward with each other and tell the truth, no matter what the outcome may be. _I want you to take off that hoodie and kiss me senseless. Yes, I’m aware of the fact that we’re still in my mom’s driveway. No, I don’t care if the entire neighborhood sees._

“I’m fine.”

Nothing about the look in his eyes told her he believed her, but he didn’t press on and instead focused on getting off the driveway. For two people who had spent the last two years getting advice from marriage counsellors and working intensely on their communication, they were doing an awful lot of not saying what they were really thinking.

Once they hit the road, Scott turned on some radio station that played non-stop country music. On a normal day, they wouldn’t last three blocks before Tessa would change it to something else. Today, they almost made it to the skate shop before she finally glanced sideways at him.

It was a strange thing to realize she had never felt this nervous to be alone in a car with him, given the fact that they’d spent countless hours on the road together. But none of those road trips had involved Tessa picturing a future with the boy who drove her over the border twice a week.

Scott clearing his throat brought an end to the awkward silence between them. Tessa was staring straight ahead again when he tapped on the steering wheel and asked, “So, are you ready to get those skates fixed?”

Switching the conversation topic to her skates did nothing to make her feel less uptight, but the distraction worked: she groaned as she rolled her eyes and let her head fell back against the headrest. “Scott, we’ve been over this. I’ll break in my new skates _after_ the tour. You of all people should know how little time we’ve had over the last few weeks.”

“Yes, and that’s why I told you to break them in _before_ the tour.” His voice was strangely patient, with a hint of amusement that ticked her off even more—because she knew he was right. And he knew that too.

“I was busy before the tour,” she said flatly.

“Are you busy _now_?”

She shot him a glare. “The only reason you’re able to drop off your skates after closing hours is because Paul is nice enough to keep the shop open a little longer tonight. I can’t ask him to attach the blades to my boots too.”

“Tess, he’ll be glad to fix them for you when he sees what your current skates look like.”

“Well, too bad, because I didn’t bring my new boots.” _For that very reason._

“Let me turn around, then.”

“No, don’t.” She shook her head and felt a shudder run down her spine; just the thought of skating in new boots for the rest of the tour (or at least the rehearsals) made her feet ache, because new skates were an absolute bitch to break in. They’d had almost the exact same discussion four years ago, when she was refusing to get new skates for the Stars On Ice shows and was clinging onto her Olympic skates like they were her most precious possession, when in reality it was her skating partner she was trying to hold onto.

After Sochi, he’d slipped away from her like sand slipping through her fingers. They hadn’t stopped talking completely like they had after her first surgery on her chins, but she’d felt powerless when he slowly spiraled out of control after they got back from the Olympics. She knew Danny and Charlie had witnessed more than she had, but she remembered the night when she’d given him a ride home in his own car clear as day.

He was drunk enough that Charlie had called her, since he was working a late shift and couldn’t pick up his younger brother when the bar owner called. Scott hadn’t said a word when she drove him home from the bar, and she hadn’t said a word when she noticed the silver sliver of a beat-up Olympic medal at the bottom of his truck. After making sure he was safely tucked into bed with a bucket next to him and some water on his nightstand, she’d taken his medal with her to her house in London.

The next day, she’d sent him a picture of her holding up her brand-new skates in his family’s skate shop. He’d replied with a thumbs-up emoji not long after she'd sent him the picture, and although it wasn’t much, it was the first reply she’d gotten from him since the beginning of summer. It had filled her heart with a warmth she hadn’t felt since their free dance music ended in Sochi, all their dreams of winning gold and beating not only their training mates but also their own coach still largely intact.

She almost felt like giving him a thumbs-up now, just to distract him from worrying about her skates, when she noticed they were almost at the skate shop. Scott parked the truck across the street and got out, but not before leaning over to her and saying in a low voice, “I bet you twenty bucks my mom is going to ask you to stay for dinner.”

“She’s here?” Tessa perked up from checking his glove compartment for a Jolly Rancher to pop into her mouth. Her phone was buzzing in her hand, but she ignored it.

“She knew I was taking you with me,” he said. “ _Of course_ she is.”

She considered him for a moment, her fingers wrapping around the familiarly shaped candy. “Make it thirty.”

His face lit up as he reached out to shake her hand. “Pleasure doing business with you, Virtch. You might as well give me those thirty bucks now and be done with it.”

“I’m just going to wait for you to give me yours, if you don’t mind.” She stepped out of the car with a buzzing phone in one hand and a Jolly Rancher in the other, already deciding how she was going to spend her thirty bucks at the gas station on the way home because she was utterly convinced Alma would never ask her to stay for dinner, since they were only in London until tomorrow night and family time was more precious than ever with the tour..

Boy, was she wrong about that.

____________________________

Two hours after dropping off their skates at the skate shop, Tessa was down thirty bucks and three weeks of bragging rights and gained two pounds instead after Alma’s delicious steak and mashed potatoes, which she was still recovering from an hour after finishing her plate. She was squished between Scott and his cousin, Cara, at a table that was far too small to seat everyone currently gathered inside the house, which was why all the kids had eaten dinner on the floor by the fireplace. By now, everyone had scattered over the couches in the living room and the kitchen, but Tessa hadn't moved her leg from where it was pressed against Scott's. The group that remained at the table were mostly Scott’s uncles, Alma, Carol, Cara, Sheri and Kate.

Jordan had called her from Toronto complaining she was going to be stuck there until tomorrow. She’d apologized multiple times for ruining their movie night and for not being able to see her before the show tomorrow, and when Alma had suggested Tessa and her mom came over for dinner instead, she hadn’t even thought twice about it.

Even if it meant losing the bet to Scott, who’d bought thirty dollars’ worth of mints just because they were one of the few types of candyTessa didn’t particularly like.

It was a win-win situation, though. The mints had earned Scott the title of Best Uncle Ever, since he’d shared a giant bag with all of his nieces and nephews. Seeing him laugh and mess around with Danny and Charlie’s kids at this impromptu family gathering made Tessa’s heart do flips in the space above her head, where it had been since the show on Halloween, and overwhelmed her with the sensation that this just felt _right_.

Him. Her. Both of their families gathered in the house where she’d stepped into the room of a boy who wasn’t one of her brothers for the first time.

Tessa broke free from her nostalgic thoughts only when she noticed half of the table was staring at her like they were all waiting for her to answer a question. Heat spreading to her cheeks, her mind was suddenly racing to retrace the steps of a conversation she hadn’t paid any attention to.

“Tess is just trying to keep those skates until they literally break on the ice,” Scott jumped to the rescue when it was clear she wasn’t going to answer whoever just asked her something. It wasn’t a rescue as much as a snarky remark, but Tessa still turned to look at him.

He was in the middle of a very pink and very messy nail painting session with one of his nieces, who’d been adamant on painting both his toes and fingernails. His attention was now focused on Tessa, giving his niece the opportunity to turn the nail painting into more of a finger painting war. “I’ve tried, Kate, and she’s not budging,” he added when Tessa cocked a brow at him.

Her gaze shifted to the spot across the table where her mom was sitting next to Carol. She’d spent the entire night trying to hide the fact that she was giving her and Scott the biggest heart eyes, but it was so blatantly obvious that she was attempting to school her face into a casual, we’re-just-having-dinner-at-the-house-of-our-soon-to-be-family-in-law face that she might as well have been sitting there with a bridal bouquet. Her subtlety was worse than that of a toddler.

“I already told you I’m going to get my skates molded soon, I just haven’t had the chance yet,” Tessa said, more focused on shooting her mom a death glare than her and Scott’s everlasting discussion about her new skates. She’d already _bought_ the boots and the blades, for goodness sake. What else was he expecting from her?

“You know those old skates are going to fall apart of you don’t start using your new ones,” Scott said. He let out a little gasp when assessing the damage his niece had done in the few seconds he hadn’t paid attention to her, and if Tessa wasn’t so focused on mentally signaling her mom to stop acting weird, she would’ve found it adorable.

Gosh freaking darnit. Why did she tell her about Scott again?

“Okay, I think it’s bedtime for everyone under twelve,” Danny suddenly announced from the living room. He came walking into the dining room clapping his hands above his head, an action that was immediately answered with high-pitched complaints from his kids (they were all under twelve) and multiple sets of pounding little feet that tried to escape him. Scott’s personal nail technician fled her station and was shrieking as she ran from her dad’s grabbing arms, bottles of nail polish forgotten on the table.

The sudden noise and happy chaos in the house were welcoming to Tessa’s spinning thoughts. When she got up with the rest of the family to clear the coffee mugs and tea bags off the table, she and Scott sneaked a glance at each other, and she was struck by the realization that this could be him one day: ushering their kids to leave grandma’s house and getting after them when they refused to get their coats on.

And then she physically stopped herself in the middle of loading the dishwasher, three coffee cups still stacked in her hands. If anything constituted as Moving Too Damn Fast (something their therapist would probably phrase a little more eloquently), this was it: they hadn’t even had The Talk yet, and here she was deciding on the number of kids they were going to have. If she was planning on keeping her sanity, they needed to take things slow.

She spent the next few minutes trying to catch Scott’s gaze again, because she was desperate to get to the talking part of her Taking Things Slow plan. Her attempts failed, however, and they were standing in the hallway to say goodbye to Danny and Charlie when Scott suddenly climed the first few steps of the stairs and waved his arms over his head to get everyone’s attention.

“Hey, yo, listen up,” he said, stretching his neck to look at the part of his family that was huddled together in the narrow hallway. “Wouldn’t you all agree we like having the Virtues here?”

His words made multiple alarm bells go off in Tessa’s head all at once and she froze in the middle of her hug with Danny’s wife, the other Tessa in the room. She usually knew what he was thinking just by looking at him, but this time she was completely clueless to what was to come and it scared the crap out of her.

Everyone else seemed about as confused as she was when Scott directed his grin towards her. She stared back at him, trying to read the expression on his face, but it was borderline insane and she couldn’t make sense of it. Ultimately, it were his next words that made her heart drop in her stomach.

“So how about we do this again for Christmas Eve?”

So much for taking things fucking _slow_.


	4. no regrets, just love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elvis organizes a team building exercise and there's a little surprise waiting in the tour bus afterward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream". Because it was, in fact, Tessa's teenage dream to be with Scott... and maybe the feeling was mutual?

_The Moir house, Ilderton_

 

Scott knew his epic, genius, _“this is totes going to woo her enough to spend the next eighty years watching Jeopardy with me”_ idea to invite the Virtues at his mom’s house for Christmas Eve was quickly heading the opposite direction of genius when he saw Tessa turning a concerning shade of grey in the midst of his family members. The bubble of happiness inside his chest that had only swollen when they’d locked eyes at the table earlier inflated all at once, and the first thing that came to mind as his smile froze on his face was the even worse idea to say, “It was a joke?”    

This was the exact reason why he sometimes wished he could get someone to proofread his thoughts before he blurted them out in front of his entire family—and made Tessa’s face look like _that_.

Brows arched, lips pressed together in a forced smile that didn’t reach her green eyes, she was looking at him like a deer trapped in headlights. He hated that face, and he’d hated it ever since she’d started using it on him years ago when she got back to the rink after her first surgery. He knew she had every right to be mad at him then because he hadn’t been there for her when she needed him most, their four-week silence creating a gap between them the size of the Mississippi river, but ever since their first practice that didn’t involve sandbags to replace Tessa, he’d done everything in his power to never be the reason why she made that face ever again.

“Uhm, sure, if Tutu and Kate don’t have anything special planned,” Danny spoke up when a low murmur of “Yeah, that would be fun!” and “Why not!” was spreading in the hallway amongst the Moirs, and they all turned to the Virtues to smile and nod enthusiastically. The vibe amongst his family members was positive, but they all seemed slightly caught off guard, for the simple reason that no one had a clue what Scott was actually trying to tell them.  

In a perfect world, he would have pulled Tessa to his chest and said, “Look, folks, this is my homie and I want her here with me for Christmas”. But because he couldn’t do that, he’d tried something else that was even worse, he realized now, for two simple reasons.

One: their families were close, but they’d never spent Christmas together in the twenty-one years he and Tessa had known each other, so he might as well have announced their wedding date and let his brothers fight over who was going to be his best man.

Two: Christmas cards. What were they going to do, send one out with Tessa in it? They’d exchanged Christmas cards ever since Tessa was ten, but their interactions around the holidays were limited to the snowy evening before Christmas Eve when Tessa, Kate and Jordan personally stopped by to deliver a card at the Moirs and they stayed for some hot chocolate.

In the end, there was only one conclusion Scott could make, which could be summarized in a powerful, all-encompassing FUCK.

“Scotty, that’s just a wonderful idea. We could get Casey and Kevin to join us too, they are welcome to bring their families as well.”

His mom was standing at the base of the stairs with—well _fuck_ , were those _tears_ in her eyes? Scott almost wanted to turn to the wall and put his face through it, but he restrained himself and answered his mom’s hug, hoping she wouldn’t feel how he was tightening every muscle in his body. She rubbed his back more tenderly than was probably necessary in the current situation, and Scott wondered if this was what it would be like if they officially got together and told everyone about it.

Well. In case they didn’t already suspect something after his blunder, that was.

Judging by the grins of his brothers when he looked at them over his mom’s shoulder, they clearly did. The only family members who weren’t trying to figure out the hidden meaning behind his Christmas invitation were his nieces and nephews, who were talking Tessa’s head off and making plans to decorate gingerbread houses and go sledding at the Coldstream Conservation Area before Christmas Eve dinner. He could’ve sworn he even heard one of them mentioning matching Christmas pajamas.

Double fuck.

“Should be fun, eh?” Scott said in an attempt to pretend like this was no big deal at all, pumping a fist in the air. He could feel Tessa’s eyes drilling holes in his head when he added, just to top things off, “And I don’t want any jokes about relationship crap or whatever, because that’s just getting old.”

If anything was going to make things worse, _that_ was. He knew it the moment hurt flashed over Tessa’s face and her smile turned into a grimace. He braced himself for the worst when she said goodbye to his nieces and nephews and turned around to walk over to him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at rehearsals, okay?”

The tone of her voice was calm, but her eyes were on fire, and Scott once again had to fight the urge to crash his head into the wall. That was not what he'd wanted her to say. He wanted to pull her in and make sure he didn’t just screw things up completely because he couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut, but he just nodded instead. For a fleeting moment, her arms wrapped around him in a hug that felt like they were two strangers who just met each other.

His heart was in his stomach. And he couldn’t do anything to take back his words, or to stop Tessa from pulling away from him and joining her mom. In the end, Kate was the one who turned around before they headed out the door and said, “We’ll have to try to make this work!”. Not Tessa.

Scott was unsure about a lot of things right now, but if he knew Tessa, he would be facing a ticking time bomb at the rink tomorrow.

____________________________

_Budweiser Gardens, London_

_The next day_

 

“Tess. T. Virtch. Talk to me.”

Rubbing even harder with the cotton pads and entering her fifth minute of straight-up ignoring him, Tessa bit down hard on her teeth and treated the nail polish on his fingers like it was vermin that needed to come off as soon as possible. Scott was letting this attack on his fingers happen, because he didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter; her grip on his hands was tighter than any of the holds in their lifts.

It was the morning of the London show, and they were standing at the sink of the women’s bathroom in the Budweiser Gardens, a pack of cotton pads and nail polish remover on the counter. Technically, Tessa had been ignoring him since she and her mom left the Moir house the previous night—something she’d intended to persevere until today’s rehearsals in the afternoon. Her plan had seemed solid, until Elvis had asked all of them to gather at the arena in the morning before the tour crew started setting up for the show for some “team building exercise” (Tessa still wasn’t sure what he meant by that).

Scott had arrived ten minutes after everyone else (even after Kaitlyn, who hadn’t set an alarm because she lost her phone after one of the previous shows), yelling apologies and something about oversleeping the minute he’d burst through the doors with his bag over his shoulder. And the _idiot_ hadn’t cared to remove the nail polish from the previous night, which was why he and Tessa were now locked in the women’s bathroom trying to remove it while Andrew and Chiddy occasionally banged on the door and shouted to hurry the hell up because _“No one has time for nail polish drama!”_

Tessa’s mood might've been below par, but she was _not_ letting Scott go out there with pink nail polish all over his fingers and toes.

“Teeeeeessss.”

An arched finger came up to flick her Expos cap off her head, but she didn’t flinch when it fell onto the bathroom floor. He had switched to trying to make her smile instead of prying an answer out of her, and while she appreciated his effort, she kept her poker face intact. That poker face was the only thing about her that wasn’t hurting right now.

Silences were their worst fights. They never really shouted at each other, even when Suzanne, their coach in Kitchener, had suggested it one time when they were both on edge before their first Canadian Championships as juniors in 2003 (“Just shout it out! As loud as you can! Blow off some steam!). Scott had basically given up after half an attempt at saying what was on his mind, because it felt incredibly unnatural to shout at each other on the ice, and Tessa had just wiggled back and forth on her skates with burning cheeks. They’d both discovered pretty early on that shouting was _not_ their way of blowing off steam. For Scott, it was tiring himself out; for Tessa, it was talking things through with him.

Tessa knew it wasn’t fair of her that she was still ignoring his attempts to talk to her now. It was immature and stubborn, but it was the only way she could control herself and hold in the words that were fighting to come out. Words that wouldn’t be fair to him, so she’d rather just shut up altogether.

“ _Tessa_.”

Her full name bursting out of him made Tessa flinch, and she almost knocked over the bottle of nail polish remover when she abruptly let go of his hands. He caught the bottle before its content would spill all over the counter, but his eyes didn't stray from her face.

Her gut was wrenching. What he didn’t know, and what she couldn’t tell him because she couldn’t even make sense of it herself, was the fact that she wasn’t frustrated with _him._

She was frustrated with herself.

Just like that night when it looked like he was going to propose on the ice, she just couldn’t seem to figure out if this was what she wanted. Well, okay, she _knew_ she wanted to spend Christmas Eve with him and the rest of his family. She _knew_ it would just be weird if they spent the holidays apart with the way things were going. But she wouldn’t have chosen to handle things the way he did, not after seeing the looks on his brothers’ faces when he’d thrown the invitation out in the open like that.

For a brief moment, Tessa shut her eyes and recalled the moment with their mental prep coach, Jean-François Ménard, before their free skate in Pyeongchang. _Relax your jaw. Drop your shoulders. You’re pressing your tongue against your palate, aren’t you? Don’t, relax that muscle. There are a million different ways your body is holding tension that you can’t control, but these things you_ can _control. And it will help you, I promise._

This moment in the Budweiser Gardens’ bathroom was nothing compared to the Olympics, but she applied the advice he’d given them; rolling her shoulders, she let go of the pressure that was building in her jaw and breathed out.

When she opened her eyes, she could tell Scott knew exactly which steps she just went through.

“ _Hey, you guys have two more minutes_ ,” Chiddy called from the other side of the door, drumming a fist on the wood.

Tessa ignored him. Slowly, like it didn’t quite belong to her, she reached out her hand and put it on top of Scott’s head, surprising not only him but herself too. He stayed as still as ever, hope sparking in his eyes, when she reached for his face with the hand that was still holding the cotton pad.

“You have nail polish under your eye.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that Scott let his breath escape with a strangled noise in the back of his throat. His eyes were all over her when she meticulously wiped away the splash of nail polish under his eye— _lord knows how that ended up there_ —while doing a really good job of ignoring the buzzing bees in her belly that went crazy under his gaze.

 _Until_ her fingers brushed his cheek and she couldn’t ignore his eyes anymore. The hazel eyes that had brought her comfort and reassurance and butterflies and annoyance, sometimes all at once, over the last two decades and that seemed darker than ever.

“Tess.”

She swallowed, hard, because she hated the way he was looking at her. He had looked at her like this for weeks when she got back to the rink after her first surgery, when their every attempt at communicating was failing and he’d resorted to answering her questioning stares with _this_ look.

Defeated, and making it no secret that he was beating himself up for screwing things up once again.

But he hadn’t screwed things up this time. He had just let his enthusiasm get the better of him, and Tessa knew that.

Her fingers still in his hair, she leaned in and grazed her lips over his. Not kissing him, but not _not_ kissing him either.

This was something they excelled at on the ice. Testing each other’s boundaries, blurring the lines between character and skater to make the audience believe that there was something else going on that wasn’t part of their skating. Their teasing was partly what drew people in, what made people watch their performance with the feeling that maybe they _shouldn’t_ be watching, and it was a game they’d mastered at a very young age. It made them mysterious in a way that was almost a mystery to themselves, because they didn’t use words to create it—whatever “it” was.

She didn’t want this moment to be a mystery. She was sick and tired of putting on a show for the rest of the world, which was now reduced to the Budweiser Gardens’ bathroom, but it was basically the same thing.

She moved her lips to the spot right underneath his ear and darted out her tongue until she was blurring every single line that could be blurred.

Whereas he wasn’t moving like he was scared he was going to break the spell moments before, Scott now wasted no time burying his nose in the crook of her neck and inhaling her scent as he roughly pulled her into him, bumping against the changing table that was placed unusually low on the wall. Wrapping her arms around his neck and working her mark into his skin, she followed, spreading her legs before she halted on either side of him to sit down in his lap.

Beneath them, the changing table broke off from the wall under their combined weight with a loud _CRACK_.

“Jesus Christ on a cracker!” Scott managed to jump up right before he fell to the floor, pulling her flush against his body. He was holding her by her waist and looking back at the changing table like he was ready to attack it, and Tessa felt a bubble of laughter rise up in her chest.

“ _Hey, what was that racket?_ ” Andrew called from outside the bathroom. “ _Did something just collapse or something? Are you guys okay?_ ”

“ _Either they just broke the sink or_ _—_ ”

_“Chiddy, I’m telling you, they’re totally having sex in there.”_

“We are NOT!” Tessa squeaked offendedly.

Muffled laughter on the other side. Then Andrew’s voice: “ _Quick, tell Eric to get over here_.”

“ _Don’t_ , Poje,” Scott growled at the door, but he was still holding Tessa in his arms like he was ready to fight off an army of trolls if he had to. She was forever grateful the other guys were civil enough not to burst into the women’s bathroom, because she couldn’t hold it in anymore when she locked eyes with him.

Bursting into giggles, she buried her face in his black hoodie. She could feel his heart still pounding from the anticlimactic interruption of their kisses, but he was starting to turn more to her than to the door of the bathroom, and by the time his body was shaking with silent laughter, neither of them was thinking about the toilet or Christmas Eve anymore.

“ _Tess, if you don’t open this door_ _—_ ”

“We’re ready,” she said brightly as she detached herself from Scott and pulled open the door of the bathroom. Andrew and Chiddy immediately poked their heads inside to see what had caused all that noise, and she snatched her cap from the floor before she’d give them another reason to assume they’d been making out in here (though their assumptions would be spot on).

Chiddy’s eyes went wide when he saw the changing table on the floor. “Dude, _what_ happened in here?”

“Scott sat on it,” Tessa blurted before Scott could come up with an excuse, sucking in her bottom lip and shooting him a grin before she turned around to flee the scene of the crime. “Have fun fixing it, boys!”

____________________________

A hockey game.

Elvis’ reveal of the team building exercise was received with loud cheering from the boys (Scott in particular, but that didn’t come as a surprise to anyone) and slightly (okay, a _lot_ ) more reserved nodding from the girls. They were all looking down at the bag with sticks and hockey skates Elvis had just ripped open, and while Scott dived down to pick out his size, Elvis looked around to address the rest of the group in front of him.

“I know we still have rehearsals later, and I know some of you probably have plans with family today” —his gaze lingered on Scott and Tessa—“but it’s important to realize that we still have a few weeks on the road ahead of us. We’ve been living together in that bus for a month, and though we all get along so well, I felt like, you know, maybe we needed to blow off some steam. We all have things that annoy us, as we’ve all noticed during these last few weeks.”

“Yeah, like Chiddy’s obsessive need to keep the bus clean,” Scott scoffed, getting up with a pair of hockey skates.

Chiddy gave him a playful shove in return. “Or all the non-platonic bullshit between you two we have to endure _all day, every day_.”

“I second that,” Andrew muttered under his breath.

“Oh, like you two are any better,” Scott growled. He leaned in to whack Andrew’s arm but missed him by a few inches, and Eric crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling like he was summoning an angel to come and take him to a place far, _far_ away from here.

“Okay, as I was _saying_ ,” Elvis continued more sternly with a glare at the boys, “It’s important we keep working as a team and release some tension. So, we’re playing a hockey game today. Patrick, if you’d be so kind as to open that box behind you…”

Chiddy snapped out of his tickle fight with Andrew and Scott that had quickly escalated into a punch war and turned around to open the box Elvis was pointing at. When he pulled out a hockey jersey, Scott immediately ceased his banter with Andrew to snatch it out of his hands and stick it up in the air like he’d just won the Olympics.

“ _Yeah_ , baby!”

Tessa couldn’t help but grin at his childlike enthusiasm. She smiled down at the ground before anyone would notice, but when she reached up to pull her cap deeper over her forehead, she felt Kaetlyn lean into her.

“He’s such a child,” she muttered in her ear.

Smiling even wider, Tessa nodded and looked back up as Elvis started randomly dividing them into teams—Scott, Andrew, Kaitlyn and Elvis on one team, Tessa, Kaetlyn, Eric, Chiddy and Meagan on the other. The numbers were uneven, but they all knew who had the advantage (hint: it was Scott’s team). The arena was so blissfully empty besides the nine of them that Tessa almost started feeling better about missing her breakfast outing with her mom.

Truthfully, she didn’t know if playing an intense game of hockey was going to help her relax completely. She’d felt uptight since the previous night, and she’d almost rather just go back to that bathroom to talk things out with Scott than having to play _against_ him—which had nothing to do with their high chances of losing this game.

Scott was the first one to finish lacing his skates and hop onto the boards. Tessa was right behind him, but she didn’t wait for him to help her up before she was on her feet and skating away from him. Picking up speed and zooming around the smooth rink, she could feel exactly why Scott loved playing hockey more than anything else when he was a kid; pushing herself to skate as fast as she could was giving her a sense of freedom she only ever felt when she was skating with him.

This was something she was good at, something that was almost as natural as breathing. This was _home_.

And just as that thought was empowering her enough to go even a little faster and bend a little deeper, the hockey skates betrayed her and she wiped out completely, arms and legs stretched as she let the speed that went into the fall carry her several feet across the ice.

When she finally bumped into the boards with her skates, creating a hollow _thomp_ that echoed through the empty arena, she barely had any speed left and noticed Scott had come to a sudden stop on the other side of the rink.

Pressing her lips together, the rink was silent for two seconds as everyone in the stands looked up to see what had happened. Then, she just burst out laughing.

“You good?” Scott yelled, taking off so fast he sprayed ice all over her when he came to a stop in front of her.

Turning her head and holding up her hands to escape the cold shower of ice, Tessa nodded, still laughing. “If anyone could see how bad I just wiped out, they would take back the gold immediately.”

“You alright, Tess?” Elvis called as he and the others joined them on the ice.

“Alive and kicking!” Raising her head so she could look at them through Scott’s spread legs, she saw Kaetlyn buckling over laughing when she saw her lying on the ice, arms and legs spread like a graceful starfish.

“Come on, let’s get you up again.” Scott grabbed one of her hands and pulled her up to him, which proved to be quite the challenge because she wasn’t helping out in any way; she was too busy giggling even harder than just a moment ago.

“Looks like tiring you out isn’t going to take much,” he said when she leaned into him after he’d gotten her upright again, giggles still filling the air around them and neither of them caring about the Bullshit Chart or Eric’s glares at them. The sound was contagious: only a few seconds later, he couldn’t hold back his own smile anymore.

Everything about this moment made Tessa think back to Worlds 2010, when they’d encountered an Italian reporter after their Original Dance and Scott had started imitating her accent, something he always did without realizing he was doing it. The combination of his complete unawareness and her exhaustion from winning the Olympics only a few weeks prior had resulted in an unstoppable fit of giggles that had lasted long after they had made their way back to the privacy of the changing room.

Now, eight years later, almost the entirety of team Canada was gathered on the ice of her hometown, and she wasn’t planning on going down without a fight.

____________________________

In the end, the fierce competitiveness of Tessa’s team and their position as the underdogs wasn’t enough to beat Scott, Andrew, Kaitlyn and Elvis. When Scott took the last shot almost two hours later, Tessa dropped her stick on the ice and held up her hands in a sign of defeat, not even bothering to reach out and stop the puck coming her way. Completely exhausted, she lay down flat on her back on the ice, arms and legs stretched wide, while the other team erupted in howling-like noises to celebrate their victory.

“We _crushed_ you, T!” Scott screamed from where he’d taken the last shot, thrusting his stick up in the air and nearly taking out Meagan, who managed to swoop around him at the last second.

Lifting up her head just an inch, Tessa could see him huddling together with his teammates and breaking free from the group moments later to attempt a single axel in all his triumph. She thought how it was probably more appropriate to say they crushed their entire _team_ , not just _her_ , but she didn’t feel like pointing that out.

“Shut up, Moir,” she yelled back (the idiot actually managed to land the axel), before lowering her head on the ice again and continuing at the ceiling, “You only scored five more goals than we did. That barely counts as _crushed_.”

“No need to pretend you’re not a sore loser, Tess.”

She looked up to see Andrew towering over her, his entire face beaming because they’d just won, and if she wasn't so exhausted, she would’ve stuck out her tongue and tried to tackle him to the ground.

When she pushed her elbows back to lean on them and steal a glance at Scott twenty feet away, losing the game was already a distant memory, and she couldn’t help but majorly approve of his new haircut. When he got it done in one of the cities they’d passed through for the tour, she never could’ve imagined it would look _this_ good after almost two hours of sweating intensely.

Big. Fat. Sign. Of. Approval.

Too tired to formulate those thoughts coherently, she just lay there grinning at him, that utterly exhausted smile on her face that was the best feeling in the world.

“Okay, guys, great game!” Elvis called as he crossed the ice to assemble all the sticks and the puck they’d used. “We need to move, because they’re going to start setting up for the show in a few minutes. Oh, and Kaitlyn, Steve found your phone in the cast bus and left it there on the table for you. I'll give you the key so you can get in, the buses are all parked out in the back.”

He skated over to Kaitlyn and dropped a key of the cast bus in her hand. Then, turning around to look at the rest of them, he smiled broadly. “See you all at rehearsals in a few hours!”

Everyone said their goodbyes, and Tessa followed the girls as they picked up their bags from the stands and headed to the changing rooms. The guys were all headed to the changing room at the other end of the hallway—all _except_ for Scott.

Arching a brow but ultimately deciding he was probably just a little behind, she headed into the dressing room with the other girls. Five minutes later, they were already walking back to the back exit of the arena, joining Andrew and Chiddy, but Scott was still nowhere to be seen.

She hesitated for a second before she gave Kaetlyn’s arm a squeeze and told her she’d see her later for rehearsals. Hoisting her bag up her shoulder, she walked back through the hallway, choosing the route that would lead her to the stands instead of the rink.

He was still on the ice.

She spotted him the second she rounded the corner of the lowest section of stands. He wasn’t speeding around, like she almost expected him to be; instead, he was leisurely stroking around with his head lowered, staring at the ice underneath him. The crew hadn’t arrived yet, and none of the equipment either. The rink was, for a few more minutes, still blissfully empty.

Tessa walked up to the third row of the stands, dropping her bag in one of the plastic seats and sitting down with her arms on the seat in front of her. She watched him for a few minutes before she finally spoke.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to invite me for Christmas Eve?”

Scott’s head snapped up at the sound of her voice, and his eyes found hers in the stands. He came to a stop in the middle of the ice.

She was grateful they hadn’t had this conversation in the bathroom when her emotions were still running high, because there was no way her voice would’ve sounded this calm. Her heart wasn’t racing, and her stomach wasn’t in knots when he looked around to check if they were really alone before he pushed off and stroked towards the boards.

“Because I’m an idiot and I thought it was a brilliant idea, which it clearly wasn’t.” His skates hit the boards and he gripped the wood so tightly his knuckles turned white.

Tessa could tell he regretted his invitation, and she didn’t want him to. Leaving her bag, she walked down the stands to the gap in the boards. She didn’t step onto the ice, but she didn’t need to: he skated towards her and stopped a few feet away. “I’m not asking you to apologize,” she said, wanting to reach out for him but shoving her hands in her pockets instead. “I just want to know _why_ you did it.”

He stared at her, breathing out heavily through his nose because he was pressing his lips together. Five different emotions were fighting a battle on his face, and he looked like he was about to take his frustration out on the boards when she gave his jersey a tug.

He stopped to look at her with his jaw locked. “Because after twenty years of trying to have something better to offer you than some flowers I stole from the Ilderton Fair, I finally feel like I do.”

Almost two hours they’d spent on the ice playing hockey, and this was the first time Tessa was gasping for air. The look on his face broke her and put her back together all at once, and she felt a sharp sting in her chest when he glided away from her. “Scott, hold up.”

“I’m not saying I’m ever going to deserve you, Tess, but I’m selfish, and you’re the only person I want to spend the next eighty years with.” He was slowly skating backwards now, and she couldn’t figure out why until he added, “What I was trying to show you yesterday is that I’m ready to give you everything, if you’ll let me.”

He wanted it to be _her_ choice. He was giving her the space to say no if she wanted to, but that was the opposite of what she wanted, and it baffled her that he thought there was even the slightest chance she might run.

So she stepped onto the ice. And she was breathless. “What makes you think you don’t deserve me?”

Almost instinctively, Scott reached out so she wouldn’t slip and fall. The air between them had never been as thick as when her hands got hold of his arms. “The twenty-one years of my life spent by your side,” he answered, like it was the easiest question in the world.

Tessa wasn’t sure if her ears weren’t just betraying her, because he couldn’t possibly be serious. And so utterly _blind_. 

“Scott, I’ve been hopelessly in love with you for more than half of them.”

After fifteen years of shoving that sentence to the back of her brain and thinking she would never get the chance to tell him the truth, the words came out without so much as a stutter. She didn't even have to think about them, which surprised her, because she had expected her chest to feel tight when he knew. It didn’t.

She had never been able to breathe this freely.

“ _What_?” was all he could manage.

“I’m just saying those flowers weren’t the only thing you stole from the Ilderton Fair that day, Scott.” She laughed at the baffled look on his face and let herself fall into his arms, trusting he'd catch her, because he always did. And she knew he'd still catch her when she was eighty years old.

Their moment was abruptly interrupted when they heard the sounds of the crew arriving at the arena. She looked up at him but didn’t let him go, because they had a few more seconds before anyone would see them.

“Take your skates off and meet me at the exit. I have an idea.”

____________________________

Snow was coming down so heavily they could barely see a thing when they left the arena.

She was supposed to meet her mom at one o’clock and Scott had plans with his brothers shortly after that, which gave them another hour before either of them had to be anywhere. The thought of an hour that was just for the two of them set Tessa’s lower abdomen on fire, but she knew the only place where they could be _alone_ alone that didn't require driving through this snowstorm or diving in a toilet stall was the cast bus, and with a little bit of luck Kaitlyn had left the door open after fetching her phone.

Luck was on their side.

The door of the cast bus swooped open when she tugged on the handle, and she turned to give Scott a wicked grin before she headed inside, shaking off the fresh snow. He closed the door behind them, quietly, even though they had no reason to be silent.

“My bunk,” he whispered in her ear as his arms slid around her waist, making the hairs on her arms stand up straight. “I want to smell you in my sheets when we get back on the road tonight.”

”And what about me?”

He gave her a lazy smile. ”I’ll give you one of my hoodies.”

“Or I could sneak back into your bunk tonight,” she suggested, slurring her last words because her lips were already connecting with his before she’d even finished.

Kicking off both of their shoes but never breaking the kiss, they moved through the bus to Scott’s bunk. Tessa could’ve sworn she heard a noise that wasn't supposed to be there when they climbed in and shut the curtain, but she was too busy working her way down his jaw to worry about it.

He sat her in his lap so he could pull her close to his chest, and having him all up in her space was doing things to Tessa’s heart she didn’t think her fourteen-year-old self could ever have imagined. His hands were trailing down her back, dipping into her spine, exploring every part of her like they hadn’t spent a lifetime holding each other on the ice. Part of which they maybe could have spent holding each other off the ice as well, if she'd been brave enough to face her feelings earlier.

But she didn’t regret anything. She didn’t regret turning down the National Ballet School to skate with Scott, she didn’t regret moving to Kitchener, she didn’t regret not telling him about their kiss in Canton. She didn’t regret Sochi. She didn’t regret waiting until now to be with him, because they were in a different place than they were four years ago, and eight years ago, and twenty years ago when he’d called her to say he didn’t want to go out with her anymore.

The only thing she _did_ regret, however, was picking the bus of all places to make out with him when they heard the unmistakable sound of someone banging into the wall of the bus' bathroom. The muffled giggles that followed made her freeze in the spot where she’d been trying to give him a hickey in the arena’s bathroom two hours earlier.

“Someone’s here.”

His mouth was hot on her shoulder and anything but willing to move away from her. “Fuck.”

 _Quite the opposite,_ Tessa thought, and it almost sent her into a fit of giggles. She aborted her attempts at a hickey, leaning aside to peer out of the curtain but jerking back just as fast.

“Scott, the only person who could be in here is Kaitlyn.”

He swallowed hard as his eyebrows jumped up his forehead. _Fuck_ was still written all across his face, in addition to _we're going to get caught if we don't move_. “Maybe she just needed the bathroom?”

Tessa skeptically raised a brow. Either she’d been in that bathroom for half an hour now, or _she_ _hadn’t just_ _needed the bathroom_.

Besides, who giggles in a bathroom anyway? The funniest thing in there was Eric's pink shower cap, something he'd brought as a joke but Tessa was fairly sure he used for real, but the hilarity of that had worn off after a few days.  

Then… another thing clicked.

“How did she even know Elvis wanted us to be at the arena early today? She didn’t have her phone, and I don’t think anyone from the girls picked her up, so either someone else was with her or…” Turning her stare to the bathroom, her jaw dropped. “Oh my _god_ , _she’s in there with Andrew_!”

Scott let out a huff of air and scrunched up his face. "I'd like to believe that, but don't you think that's a bit of a stretch?"

She didn't even have to justify her theory, because less than a second later, a low laugh that was unmistakably Andrew's joined Kaitlyn's giggles. With the evidence now clear as day in front of them, Scott scrambled to his feet and turned to gape at her, soundlessly mouthing the words " _Oh. My. God!_ "

"I _know_!" she whisper-shouted back.

His open mouth was turning into the biggest grin. "Tess, you're right! They are totally doing it!"

"Duh, smart ass." She got out of the bunk to dig her phone out of her pocket, not really sure what she was going to do with it, but this felt like a monumental discovery she needed to share with someone, _anyone_. Kaitlyn and Andrew had always denied every single rumor, sometimes even harder than she and Scott had, but they were now hardcore making out in the bathroom just a few feet away from them.

Making out. Andrew and Kaitlyn.

Common sense only came back to her when Scott turned to walk to the back of the bus, and she grabbed his hoodie before he could take another step. "What are you doing?"

"Just saying hello."

Uhm, _no_ , he was not. She knew they couldn't just burst into the bathroom. For one, because it would be incredibly rude to walk in on something that was clearly a private moment between two of their friends. And two, because they weren't supposed to be here either.

"Scott, we can't do that." She took a step closer to him and gripped his arm a little tighter. "We can't just walk in on them, they clearly don't want anyone to know about this yet."

"But do you realize how many points this would earn them on the chart?"

"Scott, that's just a _game_! This isn't! Would you want anyone to know about _our_ little adventures?"

"No, but..."

"Exactly."

"So what's your plan, then?"

"We're going to leave this bus and pretend like we don't know anything," she said. "If this is something that's only started happening recently, we have to respect their decision not to tell anyone."

He stubbornly threw his head back to sigh at the ceiling. "Okay, but on one condition."

"What's that?"

He flashed her a wicked grin before he pulled the chart from the fridge. "We're not telling anyone, but that doesn't mean I'm just going to let this opportunity slip." He grabbed the sharpie that was attached to the fridge with a magnet and wrote in big, black letters  **+500, YOU COWARDS**. 

And Tessa let him, because everyone in the cast would probably just assume they were desperate to even their score with Andrew and Kaitlyn’s. Little did they know, the truth was right in front of them. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: a 30-hour drive to Nashville.
> 
> Or
> 
> This tour is never going to let me end this fic.  
> And I think I'm okay with that.


	5. i just want you close, where you can stay forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the 30-hour road trip from Sydney to Nashville, everything that can go wrong, does go wrong.
> 
> Except for one thing that goes exceptionally right.
> 
> (Rating: M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, if anyone at uni asks me why I failed to finish my presentation in time, I'm going to blame it all on this chapter. (Joke. But not really.)
> 
> Come talk to me in the comments! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one. *insert smirking emoji*

_The cast bus, the snowy middle of nowhere between Sydney and Nashville_

_November 2018_

 

Hour three into the road trip to Nashville.

Scott had never been this frustrated with the Canadian winter in his entire life.

After the pending wind warnings were posted for Wednesday into Thursday, which increased the likelihood of high wind restrictions on the Confederation Bridge (one of the only two ways they could get to Summerside for the third to last show of the tour), they’d quickly decided with the rest of the production team that it would be too dangerous to travel with four buses and five tractor trailers. For that reason, they'd canceled the show in Summerside, but that meant they wouldn’t be able to catch their flight from PEI to Nashville, where they were expected to star in Scott Hamilton And Friends On Ice. So, after a long conversation that had stretched into the early hours of the morning, they’d come to a mutual agreement: they would travel to Nashville by bus.

The only downside of that seemingly genius idea was that they were now stuck in the cast bus for pretty much thirty hours straight, if it wasn't going to take them longer in this horrible weather.

Being cooped up in small space with little room to let out his energy wasn’t really Scott’s biggest problem. The reason why he was actively resenting the weather conditions he’d loved ever since he was a kid came down to his lifelong friend, business partner and maybe-probably-even-more-than-that Tessa Virtue, who was stretched out on the couch across from him in nothing more than some sweats and a tank top and who had had the _nerve_ to go braless in a bus with seven other people.

For real. Bra. Less.

His gaze shifted to Kaitlyn and Kaetlyn, who had joined them in the cast bus for the trip to Nashville after Elvis had left the tour a few days early. They were all huddled together on one couch, and every once in a while, Tessa would lean over to them, showing even more freckles of her chest and occasionally flashing a part of her abs and belly ring.

Scott felt like he was losing his mind.

Using all of the restraint that was left in him, he tore his gaze from Tessa’s top and the form of her nipples that were showing through the fabric and swallowed hard. He could only hope the lust was gone from his eyes when he turned to look at Eric, who was leaning over Chiddy’s shoulder to get a better view of his phone. They’d gotten so frustrated with a card game an hour and a half earlier that they’d almost chucked the entire deck out the window, and because both Kaitlyn and Andrew and Tessa and Scott were refusing to sit together (for obvious reasons), reducing the platonic bullshit in the bus to the bare minimum, Eric had decided that the only way everyone wasn’t going to bore themselves to an early death was by looking for non-platonic pictures or videos of the two couples and assigning a score on the Bullshit Chart accordingly.

The only one having any fun at this precise moment was Chiddy, who’d entered the randomly-laughing-at-everything-Eric-said part of his giggle fit that had erupted twenty minutes ago when the latter had pulled up a pic from Carmen that was unanimously decided NOT PLATONIC in the slightest, and who was now providing a soft background noise of chuckles for the rest of the bus. Scott was feeling increasingly more jealous of Meagan, who was sitting in the front with their driver, Josh, because she didn’t have to deal with any of the shenanigans going on in the back.

“That’s a solid fifty,” Eric said loudly, drawing the attention from the girls.

“What is?” Kaitlyn slid off the couch and pulled his phone towards her. From his spot on the opposite couch, Scott could tell she was looking at a picture of her and Andrew where Andrew was gazing at her like he’d never seen another woman in his life, and he had to pull his hoodie over his mouth to hide the smirk tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Sixty,” he said, his voice muffled in the hoodie, placing his feet on the girls' couch. When Tessa froze as his ski socks brushed her leg, he dropped the collar of his hoodie to direct his smirk at her. Two could play this game.

“Nonsense,” Kaitlyn objected, but everyone else was quick to agree that they did, indeed, deserve the full sixty points for that. Chiddy was already at the bottom of the third page of the Chart when he added the score to their column (Eric was on a roll tonight).

Scott tilted his head back to calculate the current scores. If he was right, there was only a fifty-point gap between the two of them now, which was so much better than the three hundred they’d been ahead just two weeks ago. Part of that was to blame on the five hundred he’d added after almost walking in on them making out in the bus’s bathroom, something he tried not to remind himself of whenever he was taking a shower in there, but that neither Kaitlyn nor Andrew had asked to remove.

The five hundred was now an ongoing mystery in the cast bus, one even Eric didn’t seem to want to unravel. And after realizing they had no way of explaining why they’d been in the bus in the first place, Scott was nothing but grateful he didn’t.

The image of having Tessa in his lap in his bunk came back to him in a drowning flood now, not just the gentle waves that had been tormenting him ever since the day of the London show. He adjusted his sweats and pulled up his leg, not allowing himself to divert his gaze from the spot on the couch where Chiddy had spilled Tessa’s chocolate milk a few days ago, and tried to imagine the most disgusting things he could think of. Dead rats, a worm infestation in the walls, a headless chicken…

_Burned toast._

Oh no.

Everyone in the bus sensed the smell in the same moment, but it was Tessa who launched from the couch with a loud “ _Fuck, I forgot!_ ” as she scrambled to get to the toaster on the kitchen counter and pull out what was left of the bread. Scott knew they shouldn’t have let her prepare dinner for everyone when she’d suggested they keep driving instead of stopping somewhere to eat, but he’d convinced himself that she wasn’t going to burn the bus down when the only piece of equipment they had was a toaster.

Well, he’d been wrong.

Flapping his arms around for the smoke that hadn’t reached the lounge area yet, he picked himself up from the couch and took three steps to the kitchen, scrunching up his nose. “T, is _that_ your idea of a delicious home cooked meal?” He pointed at the black remnants of the toast bread.

“I can’t believe I forgot to pull them out.” Her eyes were going wide at the smoke that was coming out of the toaster, which she seemed painfully aware of was all her fault. The smell was progressively getting worse, and Scott knew they’d soon be sitting in a white cloud of smoke if they didn’t open up a window.

“I’ll get the roof,” he said as he reached for the little window above his head. “Eric, maybe go and ask Josh if he can stand opening up the windows in the front for a few minutes.”

Eric shot him a non-impressed look. “You know it’s freezing outside, right? Like, snow and everything?”

“Do you want this smell to seep into the sheets and sleep in them for the rest of this road trip?” Scott had managed to crank open the roof window, cold winter air already seeping through, and he looked around at Eric. He didn’t even need to see the look on Tessa’s face to know how guilty she felt, so he reached back and squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Just for a few minutes.”

Eric eventually got off the couch and headed to the front of the bus to tell Josh and Meagan what was going on. When he came back thirty seconds later, a cold wind was already sweeping through the bus. “Time to get bundled up, people. It’s going to get cold in here.”

____________________________

Hour five into the road trip to Nashville.

Sitting in the now freezing bus and digging up all of the Thank You Canada Tour sweaters and hoodies they could find had been fine. Actually, diving under the covers of their bunks and resuming their Platonic Bullshit investigation of the last ten years of their and Andrew and Kaitlyn’s partnership was even more fun than Tessa had anticipated.

Until they ran out of crackers and cheese, and the heater of the bus suddenly failed when they tried to warm up again after the smell of burned toast was gone.

Then they knew they were in trouble.

Tessa’s face was stuck in a permanent look of guilt, and everyone was trying to tell her the heater failing wasn’t her fault, but none of their reassuring words made her feel any less bad about the current situation. Everyone was freezing, Josh probably didn’t have any fingers left that weren’t suffering from frostbite at this point, and they still had a long way to go before they would get to their stop for the night. A trip none of them wanted to spend hungry and freezing in their bunks, even if no one said it out loud.

She was wrapped up in a blanket in the corner of her bunk when Kaetlyn emerged from Scott’s with her phone in her hands, teeth slightly chattering from the cold. Everyone looked up when she showed them her phone, and a collective sigh of relief went through the bus when she said, “I’ve found a place where we can get some dinner that has a big enough parking space for the buses. Josh is heading there now, we should be there in about half an hour.”

“KO, you’re a hero,” Chiddy said as he pushed back his own blanket and leaned out of his bunk to hug her waist. “Really, I love you like a sister right now.”

“Only right now?” Kaetlyn replied offendedly, but she laughed and hugged his head to her waist.

If Tessa thought she couldn’t feel worse about herself than she already did, she’d been wrong. She mercilessly started chewing on her lip, trying to disappear into the blanket, when more footsteps sounded on the freezing cold floor and Scott suddenly showed up right in front of her.

“Got kicked out of my bunk” was the only thing he said.

Her intestines were squirming when he climbed in next to her, wrapping his own blanket around her that his mom had given them for the road. It was huge, and warm, but most of all, it smelled so deliciously like him that Tessa couldn’t help but sink into it when his arms circled around her.

_If Eric stays in his bunk, he's not going to see this._

No one was. Everyone was too busy circling around Kaetlyn to check out the menu of the diner, which left her and Scott with an unexpected moment to themselves.

“I’m so sorry about the toast,” she muttered into the blanket, pressing into his shoulder. “I really am. I should’ve just let someone else be in charge.”

“Tess, anyone could’ve gotten that piece of toast out before it burned. That’s not on you. And the heater failing… well, that’s just a convenient twist of faith.”

“Convenient? How is this—”

Pulling up his blanket to cover both of their faces, Scott cupped her cheek and closed the gap between them to press his lips to hers. His hand was warm, but that didn’t surprise Tessa; he always had warm hands, even when they were on the ice.

Kissing her in the middle of the cast bus, however, was something she’d never expected him to do, but she found herself shamelessly at ease with the idea that anyone could see them if they’d just turn around to the only two people who weren’t discussing main courses and chicken wings. She even pushed her tongue into his mouth when hunger and want took over, leaving no room to doubt anything they were doing right now.

It must’ve been twenty seconds of licking into each other’s mouths and increasing the temperature underneath the blanket before either of them pulled away. She couldn't wipe the sappy smile of her face when he looked at her then, savoring their last few seconds of privacy.

“You warm yet?” he asked, inches away from her lips.

“Burning,” she said.

And then the moment was over when he jumped back out of her bunk, pretending they didn’t just make out in there. But he left his blanket and took hers instead, and Tessa hugged it to her chest like she wasn’t planning on ever letting go.

____________________________

Hour six into the road trip to Nashville.

They arrived at the diner shortly after midnight, walking out of the bus in a parade of blankets, sweaters, beanies and mittens. Meagan was wearing her lambie jammies and a Thank You Canada Tour beanie, and Eric hoisted her up his back so she wouldn’t have to trudge through the snow that had accumulated on the parking lot.

 _Freaking real platonics_ , Tessa thought as her heart ached to do the same thing with Scott. _They can get away with anything_.   

But either Scott had read her mind again or her shivering was so obvious that he felt sorry for her, because halfway across the parking lot, he stopped dead in front of her and sagged through his knees with his arms reaching backwards. Her staring at the ground to avoid the snow from getting into her eyes caused her to bump into him before she noticed what he was doing, making her end up flush against his behind.

Freezing momentarily, she looked up from the ground. “What are you doing?”

“Jump up,” he said, waving his hands.

She looked around, but no one was watching them, and eventually she grabbed onto his shoulders and jumped up. She used him as a shield from the snow as they followed the others to the diner, pressing her face against the back of his neck and feeling every cell in her body protesting when she had to let go of him once they were inside.

She was grateful when he didn’t pick a spot on the other side of the table and sat down next to her. Maybe a little closer than necessary, since there was plenty of space in the booth for all of them, but at this point her need to touch him was overbearing any of the voices in her head that were telling her she probably needed to back off a little.

For one night, no one seemed to care about any kind of diet. The food they ordered was excessive and warm and delicious, and Tessa felt like Scott was going to have to carry her back to the bus when she was finishing her dessert. Tilting her head back, all feeling of guilt long forgotten, she moaned satisfied and dropped her fork on her plate, letting the last bite of cheesecake melt on her tongue.

When Chiddy and Andrew got up to mess around with the karaoke machine, she didn’t even feel her stomach tense up like it usually did whenever people suggested a public humiliation in the form of a horribly off-key sing-off. She was too content to care, and too aware of Scott’s finger drawing circles on her leg and that was inching up her thigh to focus on anything outside of their little bubble.

“PONY!” Andrew suddenly yelled, as the song changed and the tones of their dance battle number filled the diner. They were the last costumers of the night, so the owners didn’t mind when everyone else at the table got up to join the boys for a midnight karaoke session.

“You wanna join them?” Scott asked her in a hushed voice, gesturing with his head to the spot where everyone was laughing and sitting down on the tables to join the singing contest.

He knew, as much as she did, that he didn’t even need to ask that question.

“Hell no.”

He nodded, the corners of his mouth curling up, and grabbed her hand. With one eye on the rest of the group, he guided her to the heated patio in the back of the restaurant, where they could still hear the tones of Pony blasting from the speakers.

Heart beating in her throat, Tessa turned around to look at him. His hands were already on her waist, so there wasn’t much of a distance to cross when she reached up to kiss him.

“Thank god for Marie-France, because that part of the show is my absolute favorite,” she said against his lips.

He laughed, starting to move his hips like they did in the choreography, but pulling her so close she could feel his front pressing into her. Then, spinning her by her waist, he guided them back to the shadows of the patio and started swaying with her, butt pressed against his hips. She leaned into him as they moved together, gaze locked on his, never losing focus of the dark color of his eyes but forgetting about everything around them.

Somewhere in the middle of the song, Scott’s lips found hers again. His hands slid from her waist to her front, hovering over the knot of her sweatpants, and she pushed harder into him as her tongue danced around his.

“Untie it,” she whispered.

His fingers hesitated, but he caved when she covered his hands with her own. Pulling loose the knot of her sweats, he slipped one hand inside, and they both uttered something between a sharp inhale and a groan at his touch.

“Are you sure?” he asked before they took this any further, but there wasn’t much resilience left in his voice.

She kissed his chin, his jaw, the dip in his neck she’d been dying to kiss ever since she was too young to have such thoughts, and nodded. “Yes.”

“Good, because I don’t think I’m going to make it twenty more hours on that bus without it.”

Chuckling, she pressed her lips to his Adam’s apple. Her chuckles turned into gasps when his fingers roamed over her panties, and then, bringing relief that was greater than any of the physio sessions after their intense workouts on the ice, he was pushing them aside. She muffled her moan in his neck when he found her center and slid a finger through her folds, pressing back into him but simultaneously wanting to buck against his fingers. The rhythm she settled on in the end was so deliciously perfect and right in tune with the music still coming from the diner that it took everything in her not to utter a sigh of relief.

Behind her, Scott was rock hard but keeping a steady rhythm with his hips. This was a dance she imagined herself doing for the rest of her life, a dance they would change and make their own over the years, just like they did with every routine they performed on the ice. All the guys before him (which weren’t many guys to begin with) had been practice, but she realized now that _this_ was the real deal.

This was It. This was Scott. This was the first and only partner she'd ever had, and it was almost too much to handle.

Her fingers wrapped around his to encourage him towards the end, and in a joint effort, much like anything else they’d ever done, Tessa came on his fingers as the last notes of Pony died down behind them. She kept him close to her until she’d come down from the high, but she was surprised to find him breathing just as heavily in the crook of her neck when she turned her face to him.

“Did you also…”

“Hm-hm,” Scott murmured, not moving his mouth away from her. He pulled back his hand to wrap both of his arms around her, making her feel safer than she’d ever felt before. “I love you, Tess.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d said that to her, but it was the first time her heart skipped a beat. She leaned back in his embrace, searching and finding his lips, and she allowed herself to lose it for a few seconds before she whispered in the space between their mouths.

“I love you, Scott.”

____________________________

Hour eight into the road trip to Nashville.

It didn’t come as a surprise to Scott when he heard the faint sound of footsteps on the floor a few hours later, when they’d arrived at their stop for the night and the bus was dark and quiet. He sat upright before she even pulled back the curtain, a grin spreading on his face.

“Hey,” he whispered in the dark.

“Hey,” she whispered back. “Scoot over a little.”

He did, but not too much, because he wasn’t a fan of any kind of distance between him and Tessa Virtue. Never had been. She crawled under his sheets and under his skin, her feet as cold as two ice cubes but warm enough to light his heart on fire.

They sunk into the warmth of their bodies like they’d entered a new realm of reality, and maybe that was exactly what happened. A place where they could just _be_ , the two of them, with no one to judge the exact definition of their relationship.

He knew he didn’t want to define it, because they couldn’t. What he and Tessa had was too intricate and complex to file under one single label, and it had taken him years to realize that and be okay with it, but now he was.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

Scott grinned as he traced her lips with his finger. She’d always been the rational one between the two of them, the thinker, and he could see her brain working madly to figure this out right now.

Well, maybe they didn’t need to figure anything out.

“We just… be.” He wished he had better words to explain what he meant, but then her body relaxed against him and her breath tickled his skin.

“Be?” she repeated.

“Yeah. Why do we have to put a label on this just to please the rest of the world?” He hooked a finger around the strand of hair that had escaped her loose braid and tucked it behind her ear. “I don’t need a label if you don’t need one. And if you do, I might have to reconsider this whole thing.”

The laugh that escaped from her lips was so blissfully happy that he didn’t even worry about it waking up their cast mates. He pulled her against his chest, right where he wanted to keep her forever, his grin buried in her hair.

“You are the worst, Moir.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

She snuffed and leaned on his chest to lift her gaze at him. “So we’re just going to let this happen, is what you’re saying?”

“Uh-hum. And my Christmas Eve invitation still stands, if you were wondering.”

“Okay.” Her voice was softer than a minute ago, but her eyes were sparkling. “I think I’m okay with that.”

“Thank goodness, T, because you’ve been murdering me with that top for the last eight hours.” His hands had found the hem of her top, which she’d never taken off, and he slid his fingers underneath the soft fabric and up her spine. She shivered visibly under his touch.

“One sec,” she mouthed after pressing a kiss to his lips to stop his hands from their exploratory search under her shirt. She grabbed the curtain of his bunk to pull it back just a few inches.  

And maybe it had been bold of them to assume everyone on the bus was asleep, because when Scott turned his head and blinked at the opening in the curtain right before Tessa pulled it shut, a wide awake Chiddy was staring right back at him.

“Glad you finally figured things out,” he mumbled from the opposite bunk when the curtain was shut again.

He sounded anything but impressed, maybe even a little bored, and Tessa’s eyes were wide with a mix of humiliation and something that edged on the verge of hilarity when she looked at Scott.

“God damnit,” she whispered.

Scott wasn’t sure if he was still getting air into his lungs, because his whole body was frozen in an attempt to rewind back to the moment when she’d pulled open that curtain and undo every single one of her moves. They were totally and utterly busted.

“Thanks, man,” he called back in the end, forcing his voice to sound as casual as possible. The air was pricking his skin as he said it.

And then, muffled grinning from one of the other bunks.

Kaitlyn. Or maybe Kaetlyn?

“If you two can leave the wedding decisions for tomorrow, we can all get some sleep,” Andrew added from the bunk above them.

Scott couldn’t hold it any longer: he pressed his hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t burst into laughter and wake up everyone else too.

If they weren’t already awake. The chances of that being the reality increased by twelve percent when out of nowhere, Eric’s voice sounded from the back of the bus, and _his_ annoyance wasn’t faked.

“That’s five hundred points, guys. Only a wedding invitation will get you a higher score at this point.”

And Scott knew they’d lost the bet the moment he and Tessa burst out laughing, Chiddy and Andrew (and either Kaitlyn or Kaetlyn) following suite. But he had never been so at ease with the knowledge that they wouldn’t come out on top this time.

With Tessa by his side, there really wasn’t anything in life he could still lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was writing the end of this chapter, I felt weirdly satisfied with the way things wrapped up. Right now, I'm probably adding one more chapter after this, so we're nearing the end here (though I don't trust myself when I say that, because this fic has been unpredictable from the start).


	6. tonight the midnight rules are breaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One last morning in the tour bus.  
> One last evening in the hotel room.  
> One last night in the rink.
> 
> (Rating: M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "I Want Crazy" by Hunter Hayes.

_The US border, Canada_

_The second day of the road trip to Nashville_

 

Tessa woke up from the icy cold feeling seeping through the sheets by her calf and creeping up her leg, sending shivers all the way to the top of her head in a matter of seconds. Fighting the ghosts of sleep that were still trying to pull her back down, she lifted her head just an inch and noticed she was pressing against the side of the bunk, where only a thin wall shielded them from the cold winds and the snow outside.

_Them._

Moving her head to the side, she felt every nerve ending in her body electrify all at once, a chain reaction that rushed all the way to her toes and got rid of the cold in an instant. Scott’s nose was only two inches away from hers, his breathing steady and deep, clearly still fast asleep.

She could count the number of times she’d woken up before him since they’d known each other on two fingers, this morning included.

Slowly, without waking him up, she rolled onto her side (which was more of an awkward shuffle over the fifteen inches of space between Scott and the wall) and lifted her finger above the sheets and over his face without touching him. After twenty-one years, she’d memorized every inch, every line of his face, and she recognized every twitch of his facial muscles instantly. Watching Scott sleep, however, was an absolute rarity, and she realized that enough to appreciate what was right in front of her.

The sight of him almost made her chuckle. If she had to describe Scott to someone who didn’t know him, she’d probably describe him as a kid hyped up on energy drinks. He was the energizer bunny, the boy who constantly zoomed all over the ice when he was younger, and his energy was one of the things she found madly attractive about him. But somehow, someway, watching him sleep just amplified his attractiveness even more.

She knew he was a pretty deep sleeper. That was the reason why she eventually dared to let her fingers brush away his hair from his forehead, and the reason why she was surprised when he stirred out of nowhere and blinked up at her.

“T,” he said in a husky voice, like it was the most normal thing in the world that she’d woken up in his bed for the second time, and not at all freaked out like the last time this happened.

Weirdly enough, Tessa felt the same sense of carelessness when she touched her nose to his. “Scott.”

His eyelids were falling closed again, his face softening when he smiled. “Your nose is cold. C’mere.”

Pulling her into his arms and the warmth of his body, he hooked a leg over hers and pressed himself against her in the small space of the bunk. His lips sleepily made their way from her cheek to her neck, but Tessa was too distracted by the feeling of his bulge between her legs to ponder coherently over how good that felt.

She knew this was an early morning thing, but _man_ , did it make her want to pull down his pajama pants and throw all caution they still had out the window.

With any other guy, that thought probably would’ve set off the first alarm bell in her head.

“The staring thing is cute, but watching people sleep is somewhere at the top of my list of things that freak me out,” Scott mumbled, somewhere near her collar bone now. “No offense, but it’s such a cliché thing, too.”

“You might want to watch what you’re saying, Moir, because I can still turn down that Christmas invitation.” She bit down gently on his earlobe before he returned to her neck.

“No, you won’t.” His voice was still husky with sleep, but now she sensed a touch of cockiness. “You know there’s going to be a handful of disappointed kids when you don’t show up. You’re too much of a sap to say no to them.”

She made a suppressed noise in the back of her throat, but she didn’t say anything. There really was no arguing with his logic, because 1) he had the advantage of having known her for twenty-one years, including her soft spot for his nieces and nephews (or any child, really) and 2) he had set a murderously slow pace with his hips, circling his fingers over the part of her abdomen where her shirt had ridden up during the night in a way that made her forget what they were talking about in the first place.

When his hand landed firmly on her hip, she had to pull away from him.

“Scott.”

“Hm?”

“What are we doing?”

_You know exactly what you’re doing. You’re making out in a bus with six other people and you’re not planning on stopping him. This is probably when alarm bell number two should go off._

“Uh…” Scrunching up his nose and thinking very hard about his answer, he rested his head on his pillow right next to hers. When he blinked three more times, the sleep had gone from his eyes. “Saying good morning?”

“Oh, really? Is that what we’re doing?”

“Uh-hum.” His voice was three octaves higher and far too cheerful for this unearthly hour, but Tessa found herself unable to stop grinning when he relentlessly continued his quest up her shirt. His fingers were as soft and chilly as freshly smoothened ice, roaming over her hips and stomach until…

“Can I kiss it?”

Moaning involuntarily because his hands had halted near her bellybutton, she looked down and saw him staring right back at her, his eyes big and questioning and _hungry_.

“Your belly ring. I’ve always wanted to.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to do with this whispered confession _or_ her hands, so she settled on threading her fingers through his hair and leaning in closer to his ear. “ _Yes_.”

_Alarm bell number three: THIS IS HAPPENING._

Tessa wasn’t listening to any of the voices in her head. Eyes roaming over her face in wonder, fingertips circling and spiraling over her stomach and kindling the fire in her abdomen, he leaned in to kiss her lips. Nothing was rushed, none of his movements were trying to get her to do something she wasn't ready for, and everything was so sweet and lovingly she was starting to wonder if this was really the guy who had bounced around the Olympic Village and the Canada Olympic House after their gold medal win in Korea and had barely slept for three days because his energy was keeping him up all night.

When she heaved her first sigh, his lips were down the valley between her breasts, as far as they could reach without taking off her pajamas, and she reached down to pull the shirt over her head without a second thought.

Scott’s attention zeroed in on her breasts before it returned to her eyes, and Tessa held her breath. This was new. They’d become overly familiar with each other’s bodies over the years, drawing new lines with every routine that had turned into maps, until they knew exactly what the other person’s limits were. After twenty-one years of having that feeling of security, getting off the main road and wandering into unknown territory was both terrifying and immensely freeing. 

_And maybe slightly inappropriate. Because, you know, the bus-full-of-people thing._

“You can touch me,” she whispered.

The air between them was heavy with unspoken thoughts. The last time she’d said those words, she’d been frustrated and irrational and hurt, because he was treating her like glass after the first surgery on her shins and barely dared touch her. Her frustration had ultimately turned into understanding when she’d realized he was just doing anything not to hurt her.

Things were different now. She wasn’t made of glass, and he knew that.

Pressing an open-mouthed kiss on her sternum, he started making his way down her chest. Her fingers gripped his hair a little tighter when his hot breath skimmed over one of her breasts, and when his lips finally pressed down, all of her senses came alive like someone just jump-started her brain.

“That’s… that’s good,” she mumbled incoherently, pressing one hand over her mouth not to moan out loud when his tongue darted out and swirled around her nipple in little circles. Her heartbeat went mad in her ears, making it very difficult to remember that they weren’t alone in this bus.

_Screw the Olympics. Screw winning gold. This is the most exhilarating moment of my entire life._

“Keep… doing that.” Her grip on his hair was probably getting a little too tight, but he wasn’t complaining, so she didn’t stop herself. “Scott, I…”

Heat and wetness pooled between her legs just when his mouth left her breast, and she wanted to drag him back up there, but then she looked down to see him kiss her belly ring and the sight of him made a shotgun go off in her brain. Hundreds of times she’d imagined him down there, exploring the small metal ball with his tongue and sucking at it gently, but even her wildest dreams couldn’t have prepared her for this. The real deal made her feel like her head was going to explode.

Pulling him right up against her again, she found his lips and crushed her mouth to his. “I’ve always wanted you to,” she said in his mouth, only she wasn’t sure if she was talking about the belly ring anymore.

He answered her urgent kisses with the same hunger. “You’ve been driving me crazy with that since you first got it, kiddo,” he said between licking into her mouth and moving back to her jaw.

“What, since I was thirteen?”

“Yes,” he said unashamedly, kissing any spot he could reach with an urgency like he was trying to make up for lost time. Maybe they both were. Maybe that’s why they weren’t waiting for the perfect moment to finally be with each other, because they’d already waited the larger part of twenty-one years.  

Staring up at him when he planted his elbows on either side of her so he wasn’t crushing her, she decided that _this_ Scott, with messy hair and dark eyes that had a look of lust in them like he was actively holding himself back from kissing her, was her favorite Scott.

The next moment, as his lips captured hers, teeth clashing and his chest sinking down on her, she figured she might be wrong after all. Scott who was doing nothing to hold himself back was infinitely better.

“I want you,” she sighed as his thumbs brushed over her nipples, rolling her hips and seeking friction. It just wasn’t enough. “Scott, I want you. I don’t care that we’re… that we’re not… I don’t care. I want you.”

“What, here?” He slurred his words, distracted by what he was doing with his mouth by her pulse point.

“Yes.”

Pulling himself away from her neck, he blinked down at her and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Tess, we can’t—” 

“I’m on the pill.” The words were rushed, her breathing getting heavier as the need in her stomach was building. “We’re safe, you can trust me.”

Watching Scott sleep was a rarity, but seeing him speechless was probably even more uncommon. In the two seconds it took him to decide what he was going to do, Tessa saw at least five possible scenarios cross his mind, all of which she hoped and prayed included getting naked within the next five minutes. If they didn’t, she might have to take matters in her own hands, because she’d clearly left the rational part of her brain behind somewhere in the heated back patio of a diner two hours from the US border.   

“T, you know I trust. Of course I do.” Shifting slightly so they were lined up perfectly, he put even a little more of his weight on her while making sure every single one of his movements were as quiet as the rustling of the sheets. He rubbed against her, getting even harder as her leg hooked around his.

Too many clothes. There were way too many clothes here.

“Off,” she demanded quietly but firmly as she tugged on his shirt, and they both chuckled softly when she helped him pull it over his head. Once he was shirtless, the feeling of his bare chest pressing against hers was so intimate that she dug her heel into the mattress and made him grunt in the process.

“ _T_.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, but not feeling sorry at all when she kissed him again. Somewhere between running her hands up his back and down his stomach, they got rid of what was left of their pajamas, and then there was only a thin layer of underwear that kept them from being one with each other. He pressed himself against her in a way that finally brought her some relief, but it still wasn’t enough.

She wondered if it was ever going to be enough with him. She was always going to want more of him, no matter how many more decades they spent together.

They were both on their sides, Scott leaning over her a little more than she was, when they found a rhythm that would keep the noise down to an absolute minimum. In a perfect world, Tessa would have climbed on top of him and not cared about anyone or any of the noises they were making, but since they were still on a bus, they had to make it work this way.

“We’ll have to be really quiet,” he uttered between kissing her mouth and circling his fingers over the fabric of her panties. “Can you do that, Tess?”

“Mh-hm,” she nodded with her face pressed into the crook of his neck. Surprising him with her boldness, she reached between them to stick her hand down his boxers. His mouth crushed hers when she took him in her hand, teasing with her thumb and setting a slow pace up and down his length. His fingers responded by tugging down her underwear and wiggling it down over her legs, getting a little help from her near the end.

“This has to be a fair deal, Moir,” she grunted when she was finally free of all of her clothes.

He grinned in her ear as he worked his boxers down his legs, bunching them up at the end of the mattress with her panties. He grabbed himself with one hand to rub against her core, his breathing turning ragged and his movements getting a little more chaotic with each slow drag over her folds.

“Together,” Tessa breathed, one of their keywords that reminded them of unity and synchronicity when they were on the ice, but that took on an even bigger meaning now.

He nodded his head against hers, pushing himself into her and inching his way up until he couldn’t go any further. They both let out a strangled breath when they were finally, _finally_ , in the spot they could call home. Tessa clutched his chest, wanting to be as close to him as possible, catching his moans with her lips. They set a rhythm that was perfectly in tune with the other’s movements, and though it was achingly slowly to reduce the noise, it was a rhythm that pounded through her veins and brought her to the edge in a matter of minutes.

“I’m so close,” she muttered to his chest when she could barely hold it anymore. “Scott, I’m so close.”

“I’m here.” His lips were in her hair, but his hand found hers under the covers and guided her down to where they were connected, encouraging her to touch herself. “I’m here, I’ve got you.”

And he did. When she came in strong, rapid waves, his mouth covered the moans on her lips and he followed seconds later, his muscles tight and stuttering. Tessa pressed her face against his chest and let herself come down from the high as he stayed close to her, trying to control her breathing and tasting the salty taste of sweat on his biceps. Every worry and insecurity was flushed out of her system like magic, and if they didn’t have more than twenty hours on the road still ahead of them, she’d probably stay here in his bunk forever.

She realized they were syncing their breathing when her eyes were already closing again, their arms wrapped around each other so tightly there wasn’t an inch of space between them. He pressed a kiss on her head, and then muttered softly, “We did it, T.”

She chuckled and wormed her way even closer to him. “Do you think we can get away with a second round?” she whispered boldly.

“Oh, heck no.”

Surprised, she lifted her head to meet his eyes. “Are you telling me you’re chickening out, Scott Moir?”

“Not at all.” Pressing a kiss on her nose, which was now nice and warm, he squeezed her shoulder. “Next time we do this, I want to be able to look at you. All of you. And I don’t want to have to worry that my childhood friend might be listening in the bunk next door.”

Tessa grinned. “Okay, you’ve got yourself a deal, Moir.”

“Shake on it,” he said.

“Kiss on it,” she countered.

And he did exactly that.

____________________________

_Andrew’s hotel room, St. John’s_

_The last day of the tour_

 

“Eric, you’re up. And I know you’re reveling in this, but please don’t make go broke, man.”

Eric put the wooden block he’d just successfully pulled out of the oversized Jenga tower on top of the structure before he smirked at Scott, and he snatched the room service menu out of Chiddy’s hands so eagerly he had to put a foot on the ground to keep himself from slipping off the edge of the bed. He was grinning like he was either planning on ordering everything on the menu just to torment Scott or just so insanely satisfied with the outcome of his Bullshit Chart that even a fall from Kaetlyn during the very last show couldn’t ruin his mood.

Tessa figured it was probably a combination of both.

She was sitting on the carpeted floor against the wall opposite the king size bed where the rest of the cast and some of the crew had gathered, the Jenga tower leaning over in her direction dangerously. Despite their epic loss against Andrew and Kaitlyn, she couldn’t stop smiling behind the collar of her Adidas sweater. The applause from the very last show and the electric atmosphere in the arena were still buzzing through her, and although it was a bittersweet feeling to end the two-month road trip with the people she considered her second family, she was trying to savor every last moment they spent together.

Tomorrow, everyone would leave on separate flights, but tonight, they were all still right here, gathered in Andrew’s hotel room in St. John’s to order room service for everyone.

Initially, the loser of the Platonic Bullshit Chart had to buy drinks for the cast and crew, but they’d quickly realized no one was up for a crazy night out after performing the final two shows of the tour in a row. When they’d gathered on the ice with the crew after the very last crowd had left and Eric had ceremonially crowned Tessa and Scott the Grand Losers of the Platonic Bullshit Chart, they’d ultimately decided on room service and drinks from the mini bar.

Tessa had silently been grateful for Eric’s decision, because a night out was the last thing she was in the mood for right now. The change of plans _did_ mean, however, that they were now not only buying overpriced minibar drinks for everyone, but also a second dinner for about fifteen people—hence Scott’s dampened mood.

“Eric, c’mon, man.” Scott was starting to bounce his leg up and down and rapidly tapping the hotel room desk with his pen. “Either you order something right now or you don’t get anything at all. You know they usually don’t even do room service after midnight.”

“Relax,” Eric said, waving his hands at him. “Okay, I think I’ve made my choice… the beef burger, the Caesar salad, the cheesecake and… a fruit juice.”

Lightly cursing under his breath (he could pretend all he wanted, Tessa knew he still didn’t like the fact that they lost), Scott jotted down Eric’s order on the Delta Hotel stationary. He was on his third piece of paper by now, which made Tessa feel slightly uneasy, because she was sure the hotel staff wouldn’t appreciate such a huge order after midnight.

Tucking in her feet a little tighter and making herself as small as possible, she put on the hood of her sweater and rested the back of her head against the wall. She’d been surprisingly okay with the fact that everyone pretty much knew about her and Scott now, and the only reason for that was that nothing had changed all that much. They weren’t any more affectionate towards each other in public than they already were before (which she’d started to realize was probably more affectionate than the average platonic skating couple), and now they had the added bonus of sneaking off together without really having to worry if anyone noticed or not. Eric seemed to have relaxed a little, and everyone else was just fine with it.

The only hurdle they still had to take was letting their family members know, but even that was something she was staying remarkably calm about. When she’d talked about Christmas Eve with Scott a few days ago, he’d reassured her that they didn’t have to make a big deal out of this. If she wanted to give a big speech with an announcement, that was fine, but they could just spend Christmas together and let everyone in both of their families figure things out for themselves.

Which, Tessa had realized, was probably the most comforting suggestion he’d ever made.

Kaetlyn bumped her hip when it was her turn to pull out a block of the Jenga tower. Tessa got up with focused determination, eyeing the block she’d had in mind since Scott nearly made the entire tower collapse on her two turns ago, and she made sure not to touch any of the other blocks as she walked around the construction (Eric was particularly strict about the rules of Jenga, which shouldn’t have surprised her as much as it did).

“Poje! You want a beef burger and cheese cake?” Scott called out to the bathroom when she put a little bit of pressure on the block.

“ _Yeah, I can live with that_ ,” Andrew called back, his voice slightly muffled because he was still in the shower. “ _Thanks, man_.”

Turning back to his little paper to add the last order, Scott pulled a few mocking faces and shook his head. Then, as he finished writing Andrew’s order and straightened his back, Tessa’s block successfully slipped out without destroying the tower and she beamed at him in triumph.

A second was all she needed to notice the boyish grin on his face, the one that made the hairs on her arms stand up the way they did when they were seven and nine and he was seconds away from hitting her square in the face with a snowball.

That grin wasn’t just an acknowledgement of her victory. He was up to something.

“Now, before I make this order,” Scott started, turning to face the rest of the room and shushing everyone who was still talking, “I want to ask something first.”

Eric looked at him with a dull look on his face and gestured he could go ahead.

Scott smirked back in a way that was all too familiar to Tessa, who was now sucking in her lips and trying to catch his gaze again as she stepped aside to let Josh, their driver, have a turn. Scott ignored her, taking a quarter turn in his chair and planting his feet on the carpet, staring straight at Kaitlyn.

“Kaitlyn, my dear. Would you mind showing me your room key?”

Kaitlyn blinked dazedly at him over a tiny blue bottle of coconut rum, just as confused as everyone else in the room. Her cheeks, however, were rapidly turning a shade of pink that couldn’t be blamed on the alcohol. “Why would you need my room key?” she asked with a dry little laugh.

“To check something.” Scott was holding out his hand at her, beckoning with his fingers to just give it to him already, and because his question was so unexpected, Kaitlyn did exactly what he asked her to do.

“Here. What do you need it for?”

Scott got up from the desk, head held high, walked over the door of the hotel room, and pulled Andrew’s card out of the slot.

“ _Hey_!” Andrew complained when the lights in the bathroom went out, just like every other light in the room. The Jenga tower was momentarily forgotten by everyone except for Josh as they all eyed Scott warily to see where this was going.

“Just a sec, Poje,” Scott said, in that self-confident voice and with the little smirk on his face that made Tessa think of a younger and far more arrogant version of her skating partner. But she was half smiling, half gaping at him, because she, unlike the others, knew exactly what he was doing, and her stomach was a bottomless pit that was aching to see how this was going to play out.

Slowly and deliberately, Scott held up Kaitlyn’s card for everyone to see. Tessa turned to watch her when he inserted the card, seeing the look in her eyes go from slightly uneasy to panicked, and in the moment the lights switched on again, the bottle of coconut rum in her hand froze in mid-air.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Andrew called out as he was no longer showering in the dark, resuming his humming and blissfully unaware of the eyes that were going wide at Kaitlyn in the room. Because everyone knew, Kaitlyn most of all, what this meant.

Kaitlyn’s card worked in Andrew’s slot.

Which meant they were sleeping in the same room.

And if there was one thing they couldn’t explain in a platonic way, it was sharing a hotel room with only one king sized bed. 

“So, if I’m not mistaken,” Scott said as people uttered sounds of surprise and Eric even got up from the bed, “ _you_ , miss Weaver, are sharing a room with the one and only mister Poje. Which, as a consequence, puts you right above us on the Chart. Congratulations on your epic loss, my friend.”

The Jenga tower came crashing down out of nowhere, but the timing was epic. Kaitlyn dove head-first into the chair in the corner when she realized she didn’t have anything to counter Scott’s theory, and Tessa launched forward to wrap her arms around her friend from behind, laughing in her ear even though Kaitlyn was probably the only one in the room who wasn't having any fun in this moment.

“Is he right, K? Are you two sharing a room?”

“Saying it’s just platonic bed sharing isn’t going to work, is it?” Kaitlyn groaned, snatching her hood and pulling it tightly over her head.

“I mean, you can try, but I think you’re officially screwed,” Chiddy said as he joined the pile that was forming in the chair, wrapping his arms around both girls and laughing as he squeezed them.

“ _Dude, what is going on out there?_ ” Andrew shouted from the bathroom.

“You and Kaitlyn just beat our score on the Chart,” Scott called back cheerfully, waving the room service order that he was officially about to hand over to Kaitlyn in the air, when the latter surprised everyone and escaped from the pile in the chair. Out of nowhere, she pushed past Scott, pulled open the door of the bathroom, ignored Andrew’s surprised screech when he noticed her, and yanked the shower door open.

“Andrew Poje, we are screwed, and I love you,” she announced quite dramatically as she (presumably, because no one saw what really happened in there) pulled him flush against her and kissed him on his mouth. She returned to the room seconds later, her face and the front of her shirt soaking wet and a perplexed Andrew emerging from behind her in a towel seconds later.

“The _fuck_?” he whispered urgently as he tried to make sure the towel was covering all the right spots, drops of water raining down on the carpet. He clearly hadn’t had the time to rinse all the shampoo out of his hair, which, in combination with the agitated look in his eyes as he glanced nervously around the room, left him looking like a bit of a fool.

Before anyone could explain to him exactly what had happened, there was a firm knock on the door that silenced everyone. Tessa curiously looked around at the others, but she was stunned to find that she was the only one who was surprised by the knock.

Correction: not the _only_ one. Scott, Kaitlyn and Andrew were just as confused as she was when Eric picked himself up from the bed and strutted to the door, a smug little smirk on his face. He opened the door to a member of the hotel staff, who wheeled in a giant cart of snacks, drinks and deserts, more than they would ever be able to eat.

“Perfect timing,” Eric told the lady in a hushed voice, giving her a wink.

“The fuck?” Andrew said again, seemingly forgetting that he was standing on the carpet in nothing but a towel. He stared after the lady who’d brought the cart in long after she’d closed the door again, and finally his gaze shifted to Eric. “Care to explain what this is all about?”

“This is all on me,” Eric said, pressing a bottle of beer in his hand and another one in Scott’s. “Congratulations, you finally got your shit together. Both of you, which was a bigger success than I’d hoped for when I started the Chart,” he added, lifting his bottle at Tessa and winking.

Everyone around her was grinning at the four of them in the same, conspiratorial way, and she felt like they were the only four people who weren’t let in on some inside joke.

“The whole point of the Chart wasn’t to annoy you guys, or to nitpick the hell out of every move you made – which we did, but still – because that would just be invasive,” Eric explained as everyone gathered around the cart to grab a snack and a drink. “We were all just trying to get you to open your eyes and see what was right in front of you. The only way you were going to pay for those drinks yourselves was if there really wasn’t anything between you, but I had a strong feeling the opposite was true.”

“Dude, are you serious?” Scott said, too caught off guard by this sudden turn of events to even take a sip from his beer.

“You can’t deny it worked, though, right?” Eric put an arm around his and Andrew’s shoulders and held his bottle high up in the air to toast on the Chart. “These four finally opened their eyes and saw what the rest of the world saw in them. We will respect any decisions to keep this secret just in this room, but for now, I want to say congratulations and… we love you. We really do.”

Tessa looked at Scott as the rest of the people in the room toasted with Eric, a bit weary at first because she couldn’t read how he felt about the very public aspect of all this, even if it was just the cast and crew in this room. He was looking at Andrew and Kaitlyn, and for a moment, the four of them glanced at each other with apprehension, until Andrew broke the awkward silence and cracked a smile.

“Well, congratulations, guys.” He hugged Tessa and then turned to Scott, who clapped him on his back.

“You too, bud. I’m happy for you guys. Just one thing.”

“What’s that?” Andrew asked.

Scott leaned in closer so only the four of them could hear, grinning mischievously. “Don’t make out in bus bathrooms, man. Anyone can hear you in there.”

____________________________

_The Moirs’ living room floor, Ilderton_

_Christmas Eve_

“Here, this is the one you need for the changing stairs.”

“Cara, I’m telling you, you need the one with four studs. Look, it’s right here in the instructions. Not the dark beige ones, but the brown ones that almost look like poo.”

“ _Poo_? Give me th—oh, _bullshit_ , this one is exactly the same as the one you’re holding.”

“No, it’s not. You see right here, under the Christmas lights? It’s much darker.”

“Danny, how am I supposed to see the color of those blocks any more clearly under _colored_ Christmas lights? Besides, no one cares if the damn stairs are dark beige or poo colored.”

“And how do you think we’re going to finish this castle if we start using the wrong pieces?”

Tessa was watching the banter currently going on between Cara and Danny with a fondness that was making her heart swell and her cheeks hurt. She was stretched out on the carpet, hiding behind the part of the Great Hall she’d already assembled just in case either of the Moir cousins decided to get her involved in their passionate discussion about poo colored Lego blocks (she was with Danny on this one, even if she was trying really hard not to show it to Cara). They were putting together the Hogwarts Lego castle Alma and Joe had gifted all the grandkids for Christmas, thinking it would keep them busy for the rest of the night while the adults talked.

Three hours in, all of the grandkids had ditched the castle and migrated to the basement with uncle Scott, an embarrassingly small part of the castle was built, and only Tessa, Jordan, Cara and Danny were still sitting on the floor by the fireplace to assemble the castle.

As she reached out to grab another piece of the Great Hall, Tessa’s gaze shifted to Jordan, who was shaking her head affectionately at Danny and Cara. When their eyes met, she gave Tessa a wink and grinned, Tessa grinning right back at her.

When she’d woken up that morning, she hadn’t imagined herself lying on the carpet at the Moir house only a few hours later while the rest of their families (including her mom and Kevin, who were immersed in some sort of discussion about entrepreneurship with Charlie and Scott’s uncle Paul) chatted on the mismatched chairs that were added to the living room because there was not enough room to seat everyone on the couch. She also hadn’t imagined herself spending Christmas Eve building Lego castles, but, as it turned out, putting blocks together was exactly what she’d needed.

For the first time in months, maybe even since the Olympics, her brain and her heart were at ease. Neither she nor Scott had had a moment to catch their breath since the Olympics, so going into the holidays without watching their diet or knowing they had to go to practice the day after Christmas was a real treat.

… which had become apparent at the dinner table two hours earlier. Scott had scarfed down three plates of his mom’s stuffed turkey and cheesy cauliflower, and Tessa had let him convince her (without much difficulty) that Kate’s apple pie was mostly just fruit anyway (lie) so she could easily eat two slices—in addition to the donuts he’d brought her for breakfast when he’d picked her up at her house in London that morning to go sledding at the Coldstream Conservation Area.

The current overdose of sugar running through her veins meant that she was feeling irrationally giddy, and highly convinced that she was three months pregnant with a food baby.

Oh, and then there was the fact that the Moirs had basically adopted her family as their own for Christmas. No questions were asked, only a few curious looks were given, and all of the above had resulted in the best Christmas Eve she’d had in years.

She’d just buried her smile in the carpet when they heard loud footsteps coming up the stairs from the basement, Scott’s panting following suit.

“Thank god I was able to escape, those kids are absolute monsters. Yes, _monsters_ , Danny, I’m not gonna say it any prettier than it is.”

He came crawling up the last few steps and plopped down next to Tessa under the Christmas tree, stretching his arms and legs and looking up at the colored lights. “They were killing it at bubble hockey though. They nearly beat your record, Tess. Wow, this is so pretty.”

You _are so pretty_ , Tessa thought as she laughed at his three-second attention span, and she scooted forward on her elbows to continue putting pieces of the Great Hall together. His sudden appearance was stirring something in her abdomen, and she couldn’t help but let her gaze run over his checkered shirt (they were matching—unintentionally, but no one believed them) and dark jeans.

She was well-aware of the look Jordan gave her when his leg pressed against hers, only a slightly less obvious but far more intense version of the heart eyes Kate had mastered, but unlike that dinner a few weeks ago, she didn’t feel the need to put a stop to the staring.

All she did was grin at her sister and chuckle inwardly at the satisfaction of having this fun little secret with Scott.

He lay next to her under the Christmas tree in companionable silence for a few minutes, until his breathing had returned to normal and the strain of running after his nieces and nephews had worn off. Just when Cara and Danny launched into another discussion about the Whomping Willow, having ditched the staircase and let Jordan take over, he rolled onto his stomach and blinked dazedly at the Lego pieces scattered about the fire place.

“I honestly don’t know where you guys find the patience to finish that thing.”

“ _If_ we ever finish it,” Danny growled under his breath, peering at the instructions and throwing the little book to the floor in frustration. “If I have to stare at these pieces much longer, I’m either positively going to go blind or I’m gonna have to throw something. Mom, what was the point of buying the kids this castle again if they won’t even build it themselves?”

“Consider it a team building exercise,” Alma called back from the kitchen, where she and Carol were making coffee and tea for everyone.

“Team building my _a_ —sssoh hey, honey, what’s wrong?”

Tessa looked up to see three of Scott’s nieces and nephews standing at the top of the stairs that led to the basement, all of them with the same pink color on their cheeks and naughty look in their eyes. The oldest of the group directed his gaze towards Alma and took a deep breath before blurting, “Weallreallywanttogoiceskatingattherinkpleasecanwegrandmacanwe?”

Alma’s eyebrows jumped up the same way Scott’s did so often, her face splitting into a smile. “You want to go _ice_ skating at the rink?” she asked, handing Paul his cup of coffee.

“Can we, grandma? Can we, please?”

“But the rink is closed for Christmas, my dears.” She left the distribution of the coffee in charge of her twin sister and walked up to the grandkids with her arms spread wide. “What are we going to do about that?”

“You have a key,” the youngest boy in the group piped up, his voice high and shrill. “You can open the door and let us in.”

“Oh, do I, now?” Alma asked, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“ _Yes,_ you do!!” they all screamed back in unison.

“Hm, I think you might be right.” She circled her arms around the kids and pulled them a little closer. “Okay, so how about we go to the rink when everyone has changed into their warm Christmas jammies, and then we’ll go and get your coats on and you can all use skates from the rink. Does that sound like a good idea?”

“YEAAAAH!!!” Smiles broke out on all of their faces as they pumped their fists in the air. Moments later, they were all stomping back down the stairs to inform the remaining kids in the basement, and Alma turned to the living room with a soft smile.

“I’m taking the kiddos ice skating in a minute, those who feel like it can come and join us.”

And because the entire Moir family had basically grown up on the ice, it didn’t come as a surprise to Tessa when almost everyone in the room nodded and agreed to join the kids at the rink. She turned to Scott when people got up to assemble coats, hats and mittens (it was snowing like crazy outside), and realized his eyes were already trained on her. He was on his back again, the different colors from the lights in the Christmas tree dancing over his face and one hand behind his head.

At first, Tessa didn’t even notice she was slowly gravitating towards him. She barely noticed their family moving around them when she leaned on his chest, and she stopped noticing anything at all except for the slightly surprised look in Scott’s eyes when she closed the gap between them entirely and kissed his mouth.

Right there. In the middle of the Lego blocks on his mom’s living room floor. Where everyone could see them.

And for the first time in maybe forever, Tessa didn’t care.

She could tell she wasn’t the only one who felt that way, because Scott pulled her in a closer when he got over the initial shock. They didn’t get to enjoy it for very long, though, because when the kiss was turning into two ridiculous smiles pressing together, someone whacked the back of Tessa’s head with a scarf.

“Hey, lovebirds. Time to change into pajamas and go to the rink.”

They looked up to see Danny towering over them, clearly trying to keep a serious face but winking at them before he turned around. Standing right behind him was Jordan, who was biting her bottom lip and stuck up her thumbs at them as she followed Danny to the door.

Cheeks flushed and her heart somewhere on the second floor of the house, Tessa turned back to Scott. They both stared at each other for a moment without saying anything.

“It really was that simple, huh,” he said eventually.

Beaming, she scrambled to her feet and stuck out her hand. “Come on, partner, let’s change into those pajamas and head to the rink.”

____________________________

One hour and two minor meltdowns later, Tessa found herself stroking around the rink of the Ilderton Skating Club in matching Christmas pajamas with the rest of the Moirs and her fingers tightly intertwined with Scott’s. They’d kept the kids entertained by racing to see who was the fastest and showing them how to do a spread eagle, a skill Tessa didn’t possess so she’d let Scott be in charge of that particular demonstration, but now they finally had a moment for themselves as most of the kids were already getting off the ice.

And it wasn’t like them holding hands was anything their families weren’t used to. The only difference this time was that they hadn’t let go of each other’s hand once in the past ten minutes, and the hold wasn’t their usual skating hold where she tucked her pinky between his middle and pointer finger.

Every single one of Tessa’s fingers was intertwined with his, which for some reason felt so much more intimate on the ice than it did anywhere else.

“Scotty? I’m taking the kids home, can you make sure to turn off the lights on your way out? I left the keys in my office.”

Carol was standing by the boards, holding two of the kids’ hands, and for the first time today Tessa turned to check the time on the clock in the rink. It was almost midnight.

“Yeah, we’re coming in a minute,” Scott called back, keeping the same slow pace in which they’d been circling around the rink for the last ten minutes.

“Alright, see you kids at home! Kiddos, can you say bye to uncle Scott and Tessa?”

“Byeeee, uncle Scott and Tessa!”

“Yeehaw!” Scott hollered at his nieces and nephews as they left the arena giggling.

Tessa pinched his side when the last members of the Moir family had followed them out of the rink. She grabbed his arm and skated as close as possible without crashing into him. “Why don’t you just tell them you hate it when they call you 'Scotty'?”

“Oh, because I don’t.”

“ _What_?” She dug her blade into the ice and made them stop abruptly. “Have you been lying to me this whole time?” The dramatic tone of her voice and the even more dramatic raise of her eyebrow was only partly faked, because she could vividly remember Scott’s jaw lock and his fire spewing eyes whenever Fedor had called him that in Michigan.

Back then, she’d successfully ignored how much it ticked him off, but it had never gone unnoticed.

“No, I’m just saying I don’t mind when it’s _family_ ,” he explained.

She threw her head back and pushed herself off of him, but he tightened his grip immediately when she tried to get away. Ducking her head a little, she looked up at him through her lashes. “So can I call you Scotty?”

“ _Hah_! I don’t think so.” He let go of her then, turning swiftly on his skates and taking off with a chuckle. “I was thinking something among the lines of ‘Warrior King’. Just so we don’t belittle my… _warrior king_.”

Even from her spot by the boards, Tessa could tell his neck was turning an uncomfortable shade of red, and it made her blurt out laughing. She wasn’t sure if this was his attempt at talking dirty to her or an unfortunate side effect of his boisterous personality, but it was cracking her up none the less.

Scott changed his course abruptly at the sound of her laughter. He came skating over to her and spread his legs wide so he could pick her up in the tightest embrace, just like they had after they’d broken free from their final pose of their free dance in Korea. Tessa forgot all about nicknames and and old boyfriends and warrior kings right then and there, and she whispered in his ear when they were still holding onto each other.

“Thank you for inviting me tonight.”

His lips curled into a smile against her neck. He reached up to cup the back of her head and kissed her cheek, and she could smell apple pie and stuffed turkey. “It wasn’t an invitation, Tess. You’re _always_ welcome in our home. Family doesn’t get invited; family just shows up, whenever and wherever. At least in our family we do.”

If he was trying to get her to reenact that famous laugh/cry he loved so much, he was well on his way to achieving just that. She dug her chin into his shoulder to keep it from shaking just like she had that night ten months ago, but he wasn’t done yet.

He pulled back with his thumbs on her cheekbones and his pinkies on her jaw, looking at her like he was holding his entire world in his hands. “You never feel out of place, Tess, and you never have. Sometimes I feel like an idiot for not having the guts to go after you sooner, but I knew I had to wait for the right moment. And it feels so, so right now.”

“I don’t regret you didn’t,” she said, softly, because she was trying really hard to ignore the lump in her throat. “And I don’t regret I didn’t, either. Can you imagine if we tried this thing when we were, like, twenty, and things went horribly wrong and we never had these last two Olympics?”

He laughed in that typical Scott way, loud and unashamedly. “Oh, _god_ no. I was still twelve at twenty. But Sochi can go fuck itself.”

Something tight wrapped around her heart, but it didn't stay there. Because she knew now that they had to go through the heartbreak to get to where they were now, and she wouldn’t change it for the world.

“Can I ask you one thing?” she asked.

“What?”

“What the heck did you do to those poor medals?”

He laughed again, even a little louder this time, and shook his head. “Oh, believe me, you don’t want to know.”

“I really do.”

“Okay, fine. I used them as hockey pucks. They were worthless.”

Tessa kept a straight face for two more seconds, and then they both busted out laughing. Their laughter echoed through the empty rink until they finally regained some composure.

When Scott's face was serious again, his eyes were darker than ever. “Do you think I can break one of the first rules we ever established?” he asked, the tone of his voice lower than a few moments ago.

Tessa noticed they had moved up to the window in the corner, where snow was swirling madly through the night sky in the glow of a street light, and she cocked her head. “What was our first rule?”

“Well, Suzanne probably phrased it a bit more elegantly, but I’m pretty sure it was something along the lines of 'teasing is okay, but no kissing on the ice'.”

“Well…” Tessa said slowly, considering him and then looking up at the disco lights Alma had turned on for the occasion. “There’s no mistletoe here, so technically you would be breaking two rules.”

His breath was warm on her face, his hands circling around her waist again. “Good thing I’ve always been the more rebellious one out of the two of us, then.”

She cocked a brow at him. “Oh, _really_?”

“What do you mean, ‘oh really’?”

“Do I really have to remind you of the day I successfully convinced my mom to let me get a belly piercing at thirteen?”

She could’ve sworn she saw him swallow then, but he was pretty good at making her forget about it when he leaned into her and brushed his lips over hers, softly muttering the words that made her head spin.

“Why do you think I kissed you on the corner of my street a year later?”

Something in Tessa’s belly snapped, and she stared at him speechlessly. In his eyes were sparks of the memory that still lived so vividly in her own head. That snowy Halloween night in Canton, a memory she’d assumed all this time she had been keeping for the both of them.

Maybe she hadn’t after all.

“Do you…”

“Yes,” he said, his grip on her tightening. “I remember the first girl I ever kissed. No one can forget those gorgeous green eyes.”

Tessa was so caught off guard by this revelation that she didn’t protest when he leaned in closer. His breath fanned her face and she blinked, her focus narrowing down to his eyes.

“Merry Christmas, Tess.”

She let go of her breath as the last few strings finally loosened, leaving her with a sense of wholeness. “Merry Christmas, Scott.”

And for the first time in twenty-one years, they kissed on the ice for real, under the window where they’d once stood next to each other nervously as his aunt Carol compared their heights to see if they would work as an ice dancing pair. It had taken them a lifetime to get to the place they were in right now, but if Tessa could go back in time, she would tell those kids that every second of it was going to be worth the wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaah, we've come to the end of this fun little ride! To every single one of you out there, I can only say THANK YOU for coming along, and send you a million virtual fruit baskets. (Consider them sent.)
> 
> I enjoyed writing this fic immensely, and if you enjoyed reading even just half as much, I'm already insanely happy.
> 
> So... talk to you in the next fic? ;)


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